


The Dragon of Bear Island

by GettingOverGreta



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Forced Marriage, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Jorah Mormont Lives, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Post Long Night AU, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28453974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettingOverGreta/pseuds/GettingOverGreta
Summary: Daenerys supposes it could have been worse. She could have burned all of King’s Landing. To save her people and her remaining dragon, Daenerys agrees to marry Ser Jorah, now the Lord of Bear Island again.
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 222
Kudos: 176
Collections: Winter Jorleesi 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I feel terrible that this is actually a very angst-ridden start here to close out this festival of warmth and coziness, but I promise that warmer days are ahead. Emotionally warmer, anyway - winter is definitely here. I originally had this idea after seeing a prompt for "marriage as punishment" but with these two...not going to be too arduous in the end. In this story Jorah survived the Long Night, but was still recovering when Daenerys left to march on King's Landing. Some events of S8 have occurred, including Missandei's death, but others have not. Also I am probably playing pretty fast and loose with time because I am bad at math.

Daenerys supposes it could have been worse. She could have burned all of King’s Landing. 

The truth is that she doesn’t remember the day very well, or at least not as well as might comfort her. Her memory produces snatches of screams and terror, flames and ash. So many people. Mothers and children and soldiers alike, even some of her own men, turned to ash in a confounding inferno of dragon flame and wildfire. The force of the green flames bursting to life before her shocked eyes was so intense that Drogon was thrown off course, hurled back over the walls of the city like a toy. When she fell from Drogon’s back, she hit her head and didn’t wake for hours. She came to screaming at her long-dead brother, weeping for Missandei and her children, injured and in pain, having been unable to sleep or eat for days. The sensation of Jorah's blood spilling onto her hands, hot and metallic, woke her from rest more than once, and she had to remind herself that he had been in a deep, peaceful sleep when she departed for Dragonstone. She struggled to keep food down as the room spun around her. A Maester decided she would have nothing but broth until she was actually hungry, and prescribed rest for her addled mind. Even this was a struggle, for nightmares plagued her, and her arms were covered in bruises where she pinched herself and thrashed around in her sleep.

She feels oddly grateful for Jon Snow’s honor now, for it is the thread from which her life hangs. Despite the clamoring of many, Jon had argued that she wasn’t well enough to execute; it wasn’t completely clear what had gone through her mind. He repeats over and over again, even now, that the wildfire was an accident.

(Perhaps Jon can’t admit that he loved a monster, even by accident.)

Even with Jon's strident pleas, an execution hovers ominously in the distance, for her and for Drogon, if she doesn’t accept some alternative proposed by the people who suddenly have control over her life. 

She won the war, but she will never be a queen again.

There are few options, but options are named, with the insistence of Jon and Tyrion and the acquiescence of Bran Stark, who is apparently king, though she can’t remember how that developed. Letting her return to Essos is floated as a possibility, though it is not well-received by others and secretly unnerves Daenerys, afraid of what she might do with only Daario whispering to her that she is a conqueror. She could return to Dragonstone, but Jon makes it clear that she would do so alone, guarded and kept prisoner, with new scorpions crafted to attack her child if she appears to pose a threat. Jon doesn’t realize it, but he could not have imagined a more terrifying punishment. Lord Varys suggests an alternative - Ser Jorah has accepted the lordship of Bear Island again (she tries not to show her shock at that news); she could perhaps accompany her guardian when he travels further north, if he was willing, and of course if Sansa Stark approves, as she is now Queen in the North.

Jorah’s name pierces through the haze of her spiraling thoughts. She will never be alone while he lives. Bear Island is quiet, if frigid, she imagines, perhaps that will be good for her.

Ravens fly, and Jon looks deeply uncomfortable as he reports _Queen_ Sansa’s demand: Daenerys will marry Ser Jorah, so that no one else will be able to acquire the power of the last remaining dragon. Jon splutters about hypocrisy, and how Sansa could have the nerve to ask for such a thing after what she has suffered in marriage, but Daenerys hushes him.

"A dragon cannot be caged," she says quietly, smaller than she has felt for years, before Drogo declared she would be a mother of kings and stallions. "At least with Ser Jorah I can breathe."

In truth, Daenerys doesn’t know why Jorah agreed. His according note is so terse and cold that Daenerys has the distinct impression that even her knight doesn’t want her, only consenting to marry her so that she was not beheaded in King’s Landing. Oddly impressive of her really, to have found a limit to his love. Perhaps it faded once he knew he could return to his home, to the heavy pines and snowy hills of Bear Island. Daenerys knows she agreed to save her own skin, to hide away in the most remote place she could fathom and bury her shame at destroying what she had sought for years. She agreed because Drogon still lives, and she does not want to see her child slaughtered like his brothers. She agreed to ensure that her people could leave freely for Essos, as she has promised them. She agreed because she thought that when she could not be a more hated creature, that Jorah’s love, the most steadfast emotion in all the world, would sustain her.

Her Dothraki, her Unsullied, they all stopped fearing for her when she told them that she would be with Jorah the Andal. Grey Worm and the Unsullied decide to go to Naath, to protect the island home of Missandei.

“You are precious to Ser Jorah,” Grey Worm says, confusion written over his features. The unspoken question, _but is he precious to you?_ hangs in the air.

She can’t quite smile, feeling like she is only holding herself together to make sure her armies safely depart. Once they are gone, she can disappear beneath the waves again.

Despite the difficulty in putting her thoughts together, Daenerys recognizes a certain pique in this agreement. Not only does marriage prevent her from using it to ally with someone else, taking a husband erases her name and spells the end of the Targaryens, for even if Jon has children she cannot doubt they will be of the North. This is as much a punishment as her old exile, as if having a husband would take her fire and claws.

Indeed it has, though not as she would have imagined. Her fire is dead because her bear husband’s fond gaze holds a chill she has never seen before. Her claws are hidden because his disappointment in her hurts almost as much as her sweetest friend’s death.


	2. the believer lost and the hurled outcast of light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A considerably less eventful wedding than Daenerys's first, and not quite settling in on Bear Island. (Chapter Title from A Winter's Tale by Dylan Thomas)

Daenerys Targaryen marries her sworn knight in the godswood at Winterfell, under Sansa Stark’s icy gaze and Jon Snow’s forever somber frown. Jorah would take no vows other than those of the Old Gods, and Daenerys thinks her own magic is more powerful than anything the Seven have to offer, weak and shattered as it feels now. She doesn’t look or feel like a bride, in the same dark wool and leather she has worn since she arrived in Westeros (she’d had the white fur, but she’d burned it, never wanted to look at the blood staining it again). Perhaps this is just a strange dream, and she will wake up in her airy pyramid or with a storm raging on Dragonstone. Surely it must be a dream, where the last man to share her bed quietly speaks his true name to give her away to her protector, a secret she should have shared with Jorah herself. But then Jorah's hands find her own, and everything sharpens. All of this is real, not a bizarre dream or vision - if she can feel Jorah’s hands, then he is real and alive, and so she must be as well. 

They kneel before the heart tree and she trembles, for the terrors of the night and the Three-Eyed Raven suggest there is an unsettled magic in these woods. Daenerys can’t remember any prayers and doesn’t trust these Old Gods anyway; if she asks for anything she imagines it will be twisted and broken in her hands. They rise and Jorah drapes a heavy cloak around her shoulders, a thick wool the color of charcoal trimmed in thick brown fur, which envelops her in warmth she hadn’t realized was lacking. Daenerys looks up, seeking the face that has reassured her more times than she can count, finding him altered, the lines in his face deeper than ever, his pale eyes lowered as if he can’t quite stand to look at her. A sneering voice that sounds like Viserys whispers in her ear that _Jorah should be happy, for he finally has what he wants_ , but Daenerys can see the truth, that she’s finally broken his heart for good by proving she wasn’t what Jorah believed her to be.

Nighttime is a relative term in the North in winter, but Daenerys is exhaustedly climbing into bed - she’s always tired these days - when she remembers that a wedding is followed by a wedding night. Not that they were feasting at Winterfell, Daenerys is essentially concealed in her bedchamber as if Sansa Stark suspected she is secretly an assassin. She isn’t even sure where Jorah is - he had told her something but she had barely heard him, the thoughts and memories colliding and somersaulting through her mind too overwhelming for even the anchoring growl of his voice to drown out.

When she was still a young bride, before she ever knew the taste of betrayal, she remembers giggling with her handmaids over one cup too many of some gifted wine, as the girls gossiped about the men of the khalasar other than her imposing husband. How Rakharo had such lovely curls, and this one strong arms. The conversation quickly had Daenerys flushing brightly.

“Oh, let's not forget Jorah the Andal,” Doreah had said, laughing. “I’d gladly take him for a ride!”

“Truly? But he’s so - ” Daenerys had paused, not really wanting to call Ser Jorah _old_. Men who were old had snowy hair and heavy bellies and certainly couldn’t easily ride all day with a Dothraki horde.

Doreah had shrugged. “I had older in the pillow house. And far uglier! He has such good hands, too, not those - fingers like sausages some men have.” Daenerys had let out a very unbecoming snort at that and the conversation had veered away from the Westerosi knight. Still she recalled the next day that she had followed Ser Jorah’s hands with her eyes and concluded that they were indeed pleasing.

(Half an hour later, she’d also had the jolting realization of why Doreah might prefer hands like that, and nearly spooked her horse.)

Years have passed, and Daenerys’s hands know Jorah’s touch and the warmth of his lips, and she knows how it feels to have him in her arms, whether from joy or terror. A ghostly sensation of his hands at her waist, helping her down from her silver mare before she was used to riding still lingers in her memory. She can see that he is handsome and distinguished for a man of his age, his devotion to her tangible in the scars carved into his flesh, and she has never felt even a whisper of desire for him. Daenerys can manage that well enough - she had supposed long ago that she might not love her future husband - but Jorah loves her, he knows her. In an intimate embrace, without the distance of queen and knight, he’ll see what kind of creature she truly is. Even if it’s dark enough here in the North to hide, what if she is broken, if she freezes, if she just _can’t_... 

In the end she needn’t have worried. Jorah didn’t come to her that night, or any night before they left Winterfell.

Jorah’s injuries were horrific, she reminds herself. He still regains his strength. He did not even carry her to the edge of the godswood, as tradition says he should.

( _He wouldn’t have needed his strength to hold her. To promise her that it was over, that he wouldn’t leave her and would keep her straight and even from now on._ )

********************************************************************************

Bear Island is decidedly rustic in nature, but after the months of wars both bloody and political luxury seems frivolous anyway. The cold, however, seems to settle so deeply into her bones that no cloak and no fire could possibly warm her. Shortly after they land, Drogon devours something exceedingly large from the ocean (the smell of charred seafood making quite the first impression), and then settles into a sea cave to sleep, apparently unwilling to tolerate this much winter for any longer than necessary. Daenerys is jealous as she buries herself in her cold bed under what feels like two entire bear pelts, and spends the first two days there, staring at the walls of the keep until her head throbs, and drifting into restless sleep pockmarked with strange dreams and nightmares.

( _And one beautiful dream of freedom, filled with creatures she has never seen before, where she is somehow beneath the surface of the ocean but still able to breathe, the sky and the sea blending into blue and green._ )

On the third morning, her new handmaid makes her appearance. Daenerys has never felt the absence of her queenly titles so acutely as when a tall, unexpectedly strong young woman yanks off her furs and nearly drags her from the bed. She hauls her into a bathtub, and Daenerys considers sinking under the water completely.

“This hair! Gods, you can’t let it be like this, we’ll have to cut out the mats.”

“I - I never had a problem with it before.” Daenerys frowns, looks down at her body. It feels like it isn’t hers. Too thin, with purple scars of scratches and scrapes from when she fell from Drogon’s back. Her nails are bitten to the quick, the cuticles jagged and red. She doesn’t remember doing that.

But when she thinks about it, there are many things she struggles to remember. She thinks she and Jon flew on Drogon to Winterfell, otherwise it would have taken weeks. Yet she does not remember what she always remembers from such travel, the skies and the forests and the rivers curling like ribbons over the land. She remembers taking Jorah’s hands in the godswood, fearing that she and her fire magic didn’t belong there, seeking the love in his eyes and finding nothing, like he was hollowed out in the Long Night. Did he kiss her? Daenerys isn’t sure if she wants the answer to be yes or no.

Her memories of their trip further north are equally patchy. She recalls trying to sleep on frozen ground, surrounded by furs on all sides. A campfire, flickering and warm, that she nearly plunged her hands into before Jorah stopped her, whispering that they weren’t alone. She remembers stepping onto the dock at Bear Island, her child soaring above while Jorah cupped her elbow, waiting for her balance on land to return. Yet there are hours, days, where there are blank, empty spaces.

“I should eat,” she says quietly, staring at the scratches on her arms. Her voice feels odd, disused and weak.

( _Why didn’t Jorah come to see her? To see if she was eating and sleeping?_ )

“Aye, you should, my lady. We’ll get you presentable, and there will be food in the main hall.” Daenerys nods, and lets herself be bathed and dressed, only speaking long enough to tell Mayna not to put any braids in her hair. She admits to her handmaid that she doesn’t know the way to the hall, and is led there.

Jorah isn’t there (yet? anymore?) but she sits, forces herself to eat bread and honey that might as well be made of parchment, and chokes down a bit of bacon, though she wasn’t sure that was such a good idea as her stomach threatens to rebel. She hadn’t been defeated by a horse’s heart, so she wouldn’t allow a bit of salt pork to win, either. 

She nearly jumps out of her skin when the door opens and a creature appears; she needs a moment to realize it’s a russet-colored dog, nearly as large as Jon’s direwolf. He trots into the hall and settles at her feet; she gives him the rest of the bacon, glad someone will appreciate it. He accepts a few strokes of his soft fur before curling up in a massive heap by the fire.

Once she finishes eating, however, she cannot think of what to do next. She had always had something next - tasks to complete, ravens to send, council meetings, piles of parchment to read and approve. Among the Dothraki she was often riding, sometimes had small, mindless tasks to perform, joined her handmaids in checking traps and the natural flow of gossip around the cookfires. Before that, she might have had reading, or wandering through a market. 

Instead she sits paralyzed, staring at her empty plate as if she expects it to present her agenda. Missandei’s voice would never bring her such news again. She sits so long that her thighs go numb and her back aches, but still she remains frozen, trapped in a terrifying circle of her own thoughts.

“Daenerys? What are you doing?” She blinks and looks up at Jorah, realizing that the room is cold, that she had been at the table so long that the fire had gone low. The dog bounds over to Jorah with a bark for scratches behind his ears. _Rogan_ , Jorah calls him.

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice cracking and small, an edge of panic ebbing through. “I can’t - I don’t know what to do.”

She hears, above the soft crackle of the hearth, the whisper of Jorah’s sigh against his lips. He holds out his hand to her, and she takes it, rising on trembling legs. He’d carried her once, when Rhaego was dying. She wishes he would do that now. 

( _And take her where? To leave her alone in a bed in a dark room? Out into the snow to freeze when she couldn’t decide if she should go back inside?_ ) 

_Someone must have fetched him_ , she thinks. He’s still wearing a heavy cloak, something he would need outdoors. And of course they did, her behavior must have looked bizarre...looked _mad_.

“I’m sorry,” she says, slipping her hand from his, casting her eyes down as shame rolls in her gut. As his queen she knew exactly who she was, as his lady she is lost.

“Let me show you something,” Jorah replies, and she can hear a hint of his old kindness in his voice. She clings to it as he takes her arm to lead her gently from the room.

The Mormont keep is not especially large, but she can imagine that once it was bustling with activity, Jorah’s cousins filling the halls; how he must have hoped to have his own children running through them. The thought threatens to bring tears because this is so pointless, he can’t even rebuild his house with her; she is empty and full of ashes. She curls her hand around his arm, trying to focus so that she can memorize the way to wherever he is taking her, though the textures of warm fur and cool leather threaten to distract her.

“You should have a shawl at least, Daenerys. We’re far from Essos now.” A slight spike of irritation at his tone pokes at her breast, and oddly she thinks it is the first thing she’s actually felt in days. She is cold, though, and she’d only barely noticed. 

She blinks in surprise - almost terrified that she’s seeing things - when they round the corner and an Unsullied soldier, kitted out in a mix of Northern and Unsullied armor, pauses and stands at attention.

“ _Ñuha dāria_. Ser Jorah,” he says. Jorah nods, asking a question, and she misses the man’s response in her relief that Jorah can see him too.

“Why are there Unsullied here?” she asks quietly as they continue down the hall, and Jorah frowns.

“I told you when we were at Winterfell. You don’t remember? Talar Qaalas and a few others were injured in the battle and were still recovering there. They didn’t have families to go to in Essos and it would have taken weeks for them to get to King’s Landing to join Grey Worm’s ship. I asked if they would serve us here and they agreed.”

Daenerys shakes her head. “I don’t - I must have been distracted.” Jorah looks worried by that, but just sighs. She fights an urge to snap at him that he’ll have to get accustomed to this sort of thing, that this is what's left of her after the North and the Lannisters carved out their share.

“Well you know now. It won’t be a shock the next time you see them.” There’s a sharpness in his tone she dislikes; he must see that she’s broken, all the little cracks in her beauty showing what really lies beneath.

He opens a heavy door, and despite herself a flutter of something almost pleasant beats against Daenerys’s chest. The Keep has a library, with books nearly from floor to ceiling. She remembers Jorah passing a small stack of books to her on her wedding day, books that she had read devotedly, starting to build her knowledge of Westeros outside of her brother’s tales. They were lost when Drogo’s khalasar crumbled, when they had to travel the Red Waste with so little. Books had been too heavy a luxury to carry across the desert.

( _A small dream, buried in her goals of breaking the wheel, was that she could make a gift to Jorah of new, beautifully wrought versions of those books. They would enjoy the Keep’s library together and fill it with knowledge, to show that she valued this as much as the sword. She’d never pictured sharing such a space with anyone else._ )

“We’re a small house, but we always valued learning here,” Jorah says quietly. He taps a gap in the shelf. “Songs and Histories of Westeros mysteriously went missing after I -” Jorah looks down, shakes his head. “I doubt Maege or the girls missed it.”

“The book you gave me,” Daenerys says, “The day we met.” It’s a surprisingly pleasant memory, in a haze of fearful ones from that day.

“Aye,” he says, a faint look of nostalgia passing over his face for a moment before he straightens up and turns stoic again. “You may of course take anything you like from here, Daenerys. Just return it when you’re finished.”

Part of her bristles at being told what she _may_ and _may not_ do. But she knows she is here at Jorah’s grace, and these are the most words he’s spoken to her in days. He pulls a slim volume from the shelf and places it into her hands, a history of Bear Island. She traces her fingers along the binding, trying to want to read it. Jorah lays a fur over her lap and before he rises, Daenerys lifts her hand to his cheek and brushes her thumb over a new scar from the Long Night, hunting hungrily for the way he has looked at her for years, a streak of softness in a warrior’s keen gaze. Jorah closes his eyes and lays his hand over hers, and she feels heat prickle over the back of her neck as he turns to press a gentle kiss to the fleshy base of her palm.

He mustn’t have kissed her in the godswood. Surely she would have remembered that.


	3. Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Dragon can rip the thorn from her own paw. Chapter title from Shakespeare's "Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind."

Finishing that first book takes Daenerys longer than she expects. Focusing on the words and picturing the history laid out in the book both seem impossible at first. But it gives her a goal, to read a few sentences, then a paragraph, then a page. Unexpected pauses frustrate her, dizziness and headaches that are unfamiliar when she has not been sick for years. One afternoon, she is struggling through a page when her stomach growls, the sensation so unexpected that Daenerys almost thinks she dreamt it. She eats supper that night, and most nights afterwards, and when she looks down at her body in the bath in the weeks that follow, it starts to look familiar again, with flesh on her thighs, her ribs less prominent.

Just being out of bed still feels like a frustrating battle sometimes, though she seems to have acquired some allies. The arrival of her handmaid every morning - Mayna is her name - more or less forces her to rise, to dress and to break her fast, even if she would rather hide under the furs. Largely because in a sharp contrast to Jorah’s more taciturn nature, Mayna will not stop chattering, stoking the fire and somehow finding innumerable little tasks to complete until Daenerys surrenders. Even if she can’t bear to do much else, at least she is dressed. Rogan decides she is a friend, visits her solar and lets her snuggle into his fur, and sleeps at the foot of her bed. Daenerys suspects he is largely motivated by the hope of more bacon, but any companion will do.

For Ser Jorah has not been much of a companion. Their conversations are brief, and while he does not wear armor in the keep, it’s as if he’s built it around himself when he does face her. He is also far more occupied than she is, trying to continue Lady Lyanna’s work of carrying the island through the winter. Jealousy isn’t the most familiar emotion for her, but she has no other word to describe how she feels about Jorah’s devotion to his home. _You’ve become spoiled,_ she tells herself, _no wonder you became so impatient..._

After spending a morning stopping and starting three different books because she cannot persuade herself to be interested in any of them, Daenerys is returning to her chambers through a dark, torch-lit corridor when she gasps, thinking that she is seeing a ghost. Then she realizes the ghost isn't a ghost at all, but an actual little girl with dark curls, sucking on two fingers, who stares at her with wide eyes. _She must be a servant's child. How did she get up here?_

"Hello, little one," Daenerys finally says, after a moment of sizing each other up. "I'm Daenerys. What's your name?"

The girl briefly pulls her fingers from her mouth to reply. "Wylla," she says. "You have pretty hair."

"Thank you. So do you," Daenerys forces a gentle smile onto her face, for fear that she’s glowering at the poor child. "Are you lost, sweetling?" she asks. Wylla suddenly looks tearful, apparently not having realized until that moment that she _was_ lost. Daenerys rushes to her, crouching down.

"Oh no, don't cry, I can help. Is your mother here?" A tearful nod. "Do you know where you were before?" The girl blinks at her, and Daenerys thinks for a moment. “Was there a big fire there? Lots of pots and a big table?”

Wylla gives her a solemn nod, with a sniffle. Daenerys gently swipes the tears from her round cheeks with her thumb.

"Then we'll go to the kitchen," Daenerys says confidently, and offers her hand to the little girl. Wylla takes it, and Daenerys leads her down the winding hallways. She's been practicing, making sure that she knows the way to important parts of the keep, though some of it remains mysterious to her.

They've nearly reached the kitchen when Wylla's mother appears, frantically searching for her child. Her face fills with relief at the sight of Wylla, which fades when she realizes that the lady of the house is the one to bring her daughter back to her.

The woman's voice quavers, ever so slightly. "I’m terribly sorry, my lady, we were so busy, I just lost track of her…"

Daenerys shakes her head, trying to appear as calm and unruffled as possible. She can’t be surprised if people think she’s a monster. "It was no trouble at all -" she pauses, she thinks she learned the woman's name but it slipped away.

"Elodie, my lady." She blushes. "Sorry, Cook was saying you have a bit of trouble remembering."

"I'm afraid so, yes," Daenerys says quietly, and folds her hands in front of her. "Well it was a pleasure to meet her. She’s adorable." She waves to Wylla. "Goodbye, Wylla. I'm sure I'll see you again." Wylla waves goodbye with her unoccupied hand, as her mother takes her off to the kitchen. Daenerys watches them go, her arms feeling very empty.

Considering her path back to her chambers, Daenerys makes a decision and heads to the room where Jorah works. She did not become a queen by shrinking up and being a mouse, and while the idea of seeing him makes her stomach tie itself in a knot, it must be done. She easily recalls her words to Jon Snow about how she made her way back to Westeros, danced so close to the throne. 

_Faith. Not in any gods, not in myths and legends, in myself._

Indeed, her faith in herself had fueled her ambition, her complete belief that she could rule Westeros, that she deserved her family’s throne. Her power had grown until it became unwieldy and she’d let her ideals become nebulous, narrowing only to needing to be on the Iron Throne. Now the idea that she would have been _Good Queen Daenerys_ seems delusional, the ridiculous dream of an impetuous child who had no check on her darkest impulses. Ser Jorah might suggest the truth lies somewhere in between - he never shied away from the honest reality behind the stories, but he had believed in her with his whole heart. 

She’d had faith in Jorah, too. Her knight had broken that faith and despite her anger he had rebuilt it, stone by stone. Surely he could allow her the chance to do the same. She knocks at the heavy wooden door, listening closely for his response. 

“Come in,” Jorah says. He rises from his chair as she steps inside, clearly taken a little off guard to see her. Daenerys glances around the room, it’s warmer than the corridor thanks to the roaring fireplace and glowing with numerous candles. Her knight has been working at a table covered in parchments, books, and the other detritus of a lord trying to manage his estate. 

“My lady?” Jorah asks, not quite sarcastic, but hardly a warm welcome either. Daenerys squares up her shoulders, folding her hands. 

“My lord," she says archly. Two can play at that game. “I realized that I had not seen you for a while. I only wished - “ Daenerys falls silent, because she’s not sure what she wished - for things to be _normal_ , for him to talk to her as he once did - gruff, but kind. Stubborn and headstrong and bending to her will when it was the way… 

Jorah comes from behind the desk to steer her towards the fire, likely because one of the things she keeps forgetting is to bring a shawl when she leaves her chambers. He’s worn nothing but black since he returned to her at Dragonstone, and while dark clothes are certainly preferred in the North (she’s wearing gray herself), combined with his natural glower it gives him a forbidding air. From the moment she met him he never flustered her, and yet she feels oddly off balance now.

Perhaps only out of her element, she is a child of light and fire, and Bear Island is dark and cold. The only thing they have in common are the storms.

“You look better,” Jorah finally breaks the silence. “Not so drawn.”

Daenerys nods faintly. “I’ve been eating more often, and my sleep seems...strange, but not as bad as it was. I keep dreaming...” She pauses, unwilling to bring up her nightmares and unsure that she wants to share how the vastness of the sea fills the rest. Tilting her head, Daenerys takes a better look at him. A pang of guilt strikes her when she thinks of how little time she has had with him since his return to her service, time where he was not standing _behind_ her. “When was the last time you slept?” Jorah starts to answer and without thinking she holds up an imperious finger. “In a bed, Jorah.”

Jorah falters at that, and after a brief burst of triumph like Yi Ti fireworks in her mind, Daenerys finds herself adrift again. She can’t order him to slow down and take care of himself as she might have once, if she was ever conscientious enough to do so. She steps closer to him, watching cautiously for any sign of tension, the sensation stirring something timid, hidden away deep within her. The condition of her hands no longer embarrasses her, and she is glad of it as she lightly lays one on his forearm, and feels a muscle twitch beneath the warm wool sleeve. No gauntlets, she notes, though he still carries a sword.

“You know, someone I have trusted with my life once told me that no one can survive in this world without help. And while I may not be very...useful at the moment. The offer is the same.” Daenerys takes a breath and forces herself to study his face. He may reject her but even so she must bear it. “Even if you just need to complain to someone - I know I often did. Which you could do during an evening meal with me, if you wished it.”

“I think you’d tire of that rather quickly,” Jorah replies, looking around at the letters and scrolls of parchment littering his desk.

Daenerys’s answer rises from her heart, before she can even think to question it. “I shall never tire of hearing your voice, ser. I know how close I came to never hearing it again.” 

That wasn’t _quite_ what she had intended to say, and she must have told him such sentimental words before, but always wrapped in either queenly distance or spilled out in sheer exhaustion, and currently she lacks either excuse. Jorah's words in Qarth echo from her memory. _There are times when I look at you and still can't believe you're real._ She’d been shocked to learn that his devotion to her wasn’t solely politics or chivalry, and they’d never truly talked of it again; he loved her and she accepted his love and cherished his friendship. 

Jorah lifts her hand from his arm, the ghost of a caress brushing along her wrist, a rebuke of familiarity far kinder than she had ever managed in her life. Perhaps he’d been mistaken about who possessed that gentle heart. He considers what he wants to say, and she wonders, silently, if this is from wisdom she still does not possess, or the anxiety of a harshly chastened pet. 

"Daenerys,” He finally says, “You don't have to - to playact at anything. I have no expectations that we would be any closer than we have been.” 

The sting of his disbelief is softened when she thinks of a rejoinder, and a smile threatens on one side of her mouth. “I do not playact, ser, unless you wish to barter for a dragon.”

“That dragon? They tell me he’s snoring and scaring the fish. You won’t get much for him.” The firelight casts shadows on the angles of his face, but the drop of fondness in his voice is enough for now.

She reaches out again, clasping his hand with a gentle squeeze before turning to leave. “I hope I will see you this evening, my lord,” she adds as she slips from the room, her skin cooling the moment she passes the threshold.

When Daenerys arrives in the hall to dine that evening, she's pleased to find Jorah is waiting for her.


	4. The icy spears were adding to their length/ Against the arrows of the coming sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys tries something new. Chapter title from Henry David Thoreau's poem "Winter Memories."

Just as her handmaid’s fussing anchors her mornings, taking an evening meal with Jorah becomes equally stable. The fare is simple (and a bit bland to her tastes, but the spices she is used to in her food would be rare indeed in the North), but she cannot fault the company. At first, their conversations are sparse, mainly composed of what Daenerys can think to ask him about her new home and what she has read in her books. Gradually though, Jorah starts to share bits and pieces of his own days, encounters in the village, and his worries for the island. Jokes about Drogon snoring aside, he mentions that their fishermen have had to go further out to find a sufficient catch this year, perhaps a result of the Night King’s magic.

Fond as Daenerys has become of Mayna, she still thinks of Missandei every morning and misses her desperately. Sometimes her beloved friend’s death unfolds all over again in her mind in grotesque detail, forcing a fresh swell of helpless rage to the surface that she must swallow down like poison. When her chest seems to seize with pain from the memories of Rhaegal and Viserion falling from the skies, Daenerys presses her forehead and hands against cold stone and breathes until her inner fire is smothered and she can remember that Cersei Lannister and the Night King are both dead. 

Other memories seem to be losing their grip on her. Less often she is reminded of how her heart fissured and shattered when she realized Jon would no longer love her; less often of realizing that Tyrion and Jaime Lannister hadn’t truly given up on their sister. The sight of Jorah falling on the battlefield, her terror at struggling to keep him alive when he seemed to be bleeding everywhere, starts to fade in the daytime, though it jolts her awake at night sometimes, just as she is ready for sleep to claim her. 

Perhaps it would fade entirely, she thinks somewhat bitterly, if Jorah actually slept beside her, and she could reassure herself that they were both safe. Yet she can’t quite bear the thought of someone else witnessing her nightmares, or the possibility of other expectations, between a husband and wife. Perhaps after all his battles and his shame covered over in a layer of blood-spattered snow and ice, Jorah feels the same. So her sole companion at night is Rogan, who she would swear is bigger than when she arrived. Perhaps he’s been allowed _too_ much bacon.

At the moment, the snow has fallen so heavily that the path to the cave where her last child takes his rest is well blocked, though Jorah says this will come and go as the winds change. Lacking any sort of dragon lore for the winter, she has no idea how long Drogon might sleep, and she doubts that anyone ever brought a dragon anywhere so cold for more than a few battles. Perhaps it’s better that he sleeps, for her mood and Drogon’s tangled together, and a dragon as volatile as she feels at times would be a dangerous thing indeed. If she became desperate, Daenerys supposes that she could try to wake her precious child and fly back to Essos. Nobody has the power to stop her, and there is nothing to keep her here, other than her own guilt.

( _King’s Landing was an accident, but there is a piece of her that remembers heat before the wildfire, crawling up from her belly to her chest to her head. A moment of clarity, pure white-hot anger like nothing she had ever known._ )

Of course, she is not the only soul grieving through the endless hours of Northern darkness. Bear Island had lost many of their fighting men even before the Long Night, battling the Boltons for Winterfell, and in the War of the Five Kings before that, the latter taking all of Jorah’s family, save Lady Lyanna. She’s felt staggered by how much she asked of her armies, but she wonders if the Starks haven’t demanded even more. Bear Island persists though, preparing for the next of the inevitable wave of invasions and raids that they have endured for thousands of years. Jorah started training some young people (mostly boys, though Daenerys spied some determined girls) as soon as he was well enough, but many are children, not even old enough to squire. 

At first she found that she almost couldn’t bear to glance out the window at the training ground, even knowing that they only use wooden swords. The sight of Jorah and his master-at-arms showing them how to dodge and parry stirred up memories of seeing him fight the last time as they were overrun by wights, the smell of death and his blood soaked into her clothes and hair and skin (and MIssandei helping her to wash it away because her hands were shaking too badly, saying nothing of the tears that spilled down her cheeks when she tried to speak of what happened). After a few days, she notices that she can watch them for longer, to see Jorah’s growing strength, observe where he hesitates and the aches he tries to rub away as he moves back inside. A proper wife would help with that, perhaps, but Jorah was clear that he doesn’t expect such treatment from her.

Gods, how he loved her though, to find her and protect her in that hellscape at Winterfell. But she had tried to fight too, picking up a dragonglass sword and slashing at those monsters until her shoulders throbbed.

_Past tense_ , Viserys sneers at the back of her mind. _You’re no queen, no warrior. You’re barely even decorative now._

“Daenerys? Did you hear me?” She emerges from her mind to find that Jorah is peering at her across the table.

“Sorry, no.” She blinks, looking down at a half-eaten meal she doesn’t remember tasting. Which is unfortunate, she quite likes how the cook prepares roasted potatoes.

“I’ll be leaving at first light tomorrow, for one of the fishing villages. I'll return the following day - traveling that road in the dark is too dangerous.” Daenerys nods, for this seems like a simple task, surely nothing unusual for a lord.

Yet as she tries to sleep that night, a creeping anxiety that makes her heart race and her chest ache plagues her. She doesn’t understand, she sent him to battle or to seek things she needed more times than she can count, never truly considering that he might fail to return to her. This is a stroll to the bay and back, compared to taking Yunkai or leading the Dothraki against the wights. Even so, throughout the night, her mind conjures up one catastrophe after another, from wildling raids (though none have been spotted for months) to a fall from his horse on a slippery pass. 

After a night of fitful sleep, still wearing her nightdress and a thick woolen bedrobe, she catches him in the corridor. She can barely hold back the urge to block his path.

“Daenerys, I know the way well, and I am not traveling alone. It is a simple journey, I promise you,” Jorah assures her, plainly as confused by her worried mind as she is. Her heart is in her throat when an image from his old books comes to mind.

"Wait," Daenerys says quietly, and rushes to the little tray on her dressing table. She brings back her pearl ring, silently pleading for him to take it. Jorah frowns a little, but he takes it in his palm, and carefully places it in a small purse slung on his belt. Rather than speaking of it, he takes her hands, bowing to brush a gentle kiss on her knuckles. Daenerys finally nods, certain that he will come back safely because she has given him something that he must return to her, and he has left a promise on her skin.

“Please be careful,” she tells him anyway, and stretches up to kiss his cheek before he can fully stand again, catching just a flicker of discomfort in his eyes as she pulls away. Jorah disappears into the keep’s darkness as he walks off, his heavy, furred cloak dusting along his boots.

Seated later in the library with a fur pulled tightly around her shoulders, she pulls a thick volume into her lap, a geography of Essos that likely contained most of the knowledge Jorah had when he landed there with his Lynesse, all those years ago. Honestly, she’s fascinated by it not out of nostalgia, but because many of the book's claims were so inaccurate that Jorah would have been fortunate to survive if he’d relied on it. Reading a description of Qarth that only skims along the city’s surface, she easily drifts to the sunshine and heat of the walled city despite the chilly air. Alas, she also cannot forget how very deceiving its beauty had proven to be. 

_I shouldn't have left you alone with these people._

The servants of the Keep can be trusted, unlike the Qartheen pretenders. They are discreet and largely polite, though most haven’t exactly warmed to her even though she has chosen to defer to the steward and the cook, who have served the Mormonts since Jorah was barely out of boyhood. As Mayna kindly tells her, Bear Islanders think everyone from south of Deepwood Motte is a foreigner, and foreigners are not well liked. She thinks the Unsullied men have been better received, oddly enough, their bravery on the Long Night having become well known. Besides, Bear Island seems to respect usefulness (she cannot recall Jorah ever being idle) and a soldier on an isle where their numbers have been decimated is indeed useful.

When reading ceases to be distracting enough, Daenerys wanders the Keep aimlessly, until she comes to a door she doesn’t recognize.

The armory, she realizes, as she takes a torch from the hallway, opens the door and slips inside. A few swords, but mainly bows and arrows, axes, and spears line the walls - Daenerys thinks briefly of the ice spear that killed Viserion, the massive scorpion crossbow that killed Rhaegal, fueling an urge to turn around and flee. But she also thinks of the carving on the Mormont Keep, a woman with a babe in one hand and an axe in the other. The women of the island had learned long ago to take up arms if they could, for a raider wouldn’t care who they slaughtered. If Drogon stayed asleep, how would she defend herself? She had nearly lost Jorah because she didn’t know how to fight… She runs her fingers along the grooves of a wooden bow, nearly half of her height.

“That’s no good for a woman your size. They’re tougher to use than they look.” Daenerys gasps and whirls around to find an old man standing in the doorway. Jorah might call himself old, but this man is genuinely such, with a beard like unspun cotton and a slightly stooped posture. 

“What would you suggest?” Daenerys asks, forcing any shaking from her voice. He seems to know the topic at hand.

“A longsword, my lady, or a spear. The closer you have to get to your enemy the more your size becomes a problem.” Daenerys thinks about what Jorah had told her about his family.

“I understand Lady Maege Mormont had an axe, and Dacey Mormont a morningstar.”

“Aye, but you’re no Mormont, my lady. They both stood near as tall as Lord Mormont...and Lady Maege might have been wider.” This image threatens to make her laugh, but now she has a new idea.

“What would be easier?” she asks, glancing sideways at the old man.

“Oh, the spear, certainly my lady. Swordsmanship can take years to get truly proficient. A spear is far simpler.”

"And if I wanted to learn?"

"Then, my lady, we must find you a tutor. I’m far too old for all of that nonsense."

Fortunately, Daenerys has just the man in mind.

***

There is frequently an element of inscrutability in the Unsullied’s expressions, having been trained to restrain themselves in showing emotions since childhood. Nonetheless Talar Qaalas looks concerned by Daenerys’s request when she brings it to him. 

“Women do not fight with spears,” he says at first, then clearly regrets it when Daenerys raises an eyebrow.

“Unsullied can defend our queen - and this island.” Daenerys smiles a little at that, it’s nice to know someone still thinks of her as a queen.

“I’m sure you can. But women on Bear Island do fight, and Ser Jorah is too occupied with the young people to train me. I’m sure we can find some time from your duties. I do not need to train like an Unsullied, but I want to do my best to fit in here.” 

Talar Qalaas agrees - with notable reluctance - and she begins her studies the following day. After an hour she is worn out, her wrists and shoulders ache, and she _hates_ spears. 

“The tip of the spear must line up with your eyes.” Talar sounds suspiciously like he wants to sigh. Daenerys can’t blame him. She isn’t a natural at this at all, the spears in the armory aren’t quite the same as the ones the Unsullied are accustomed to, and it’s overly warm in the empty room where they are practicing, as it’s near the kitchen.

“I know,” she says firmly, but she is tired already. Before her fall she might have done better, she muses, she’s had to spend too much time resting and being quiet. She hasn’t even been able to ride Drogon for months. They run the drill again, Daenerys struggling not to let the spear sag, until she feels an unexpected tug on it from behind yelp. She yelps, tumbling backward only for strong hands to catch her arms. Daenerys knows it’s Jorah before she turns around; snow still melts into the furs on his shoulders, his blue eyes are strikingly bright.

“Being aware of your surroundings is generally where we start with defense,” Jorah says, before she can even begin to shout at him. He nods to Talar Qaalas. “You can continue tomorrow.”

Once her teacher is out of the room, Daenerys lets her tired arms sag, her shock at seeing him giving way to the relief that Jorah is home. “I didn’t think this would be easy, but I don’t think I realized it would be quite this difficult.”

Jorah takes the spear, casually bouncing it in one hand as if it’s a child’s toy. “He’s teaching you the Astapor style - their weapons are usually longer and lighter. We don’t really use these spears for battle, though I imagine you could in a pinch.”

Daenerys frowns. “Then what are they for?”

“Fishing, hunting.” He picks one up, holds it overhand and shows her how he would thrust it down through the ice to catch pike, throw it from a distance for a stag. Like he threw the spear in the fighting pit that day, where she had looked down and had seen that sudden, unexpected flash of something dangerous in his eyes. He places the spear back on the rack and looks down at her.

“I never considered offering to teach you any sort of fighting. That was a foolish mistake on my part.”

“I had dragons. Why would I have needed a sword?” Daenerys replies, which she suspects would have been her reaction to such a suggestion, when he sat at her council table. Jorah reaches up, gently brushes the strand of hair that has fallen out of her bun behind her ear. She suppresses the gasp that threatens to slip past her lips, as he hasn’t dared to touch anything but her hands since their arrival.

“I think we learned why,” he says softly, evoking memories she’s sure that neither of them wants to recall. _Because you can fall from a dragon. Because the enemy can be swift. Because I will not live forever, Khaleesi._

“Well, I want to learn now. Women on this island fight, I can’t just be a princess here.” She steps forward and places her hand on his armored chest over the spot where she knows his most dangerous wound lay, the one that nearly took him from her for good, trying not to remember the way his warm blood froze onto her hands and clothes. 

“I ate a horse’s heart to win over the Dothraki. Surely wielding a spear will be easier.” Daenerys manages a small smile, which Jorah returns as he produces her ring, gently sliding it back on her finger, then rests his hand over hers, warm and strong. His chest rises and falls slowly beneath her little hand while his eyes trace over the lines of her face. _He’s going to kiss me_ , she thinks, her lips parting just slightly and her heart suddenly beating wildly in her chest.

Except he doesn’t. Jorah steps away, letting her hand slip from his grasp. It feels like he’s stolen something from her.

“You should use the training yard when you’re ready,” Jorah says, his hand back on the hilt of his sword, as if he’s stepped back into being a queensguard again. “I know it’s cold, but you’ll need more space than you have in here when you get beyond the basics. I’ll see you this evening, my lady,” he adds with a nod, and departs.

The room turns to ice around her and Daenerys realizes that for just an instant, everything felt like spring.


	5. In stillness, wanderer, step in: Grief has worn the threshold into stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A morning and an evening in the Mormont Keep. Title from "Winter Evening" by Georg Trakl.

The water sings.

That’s how it seems, at least, a maelstrom of sound that surrounds her, that she can feel thrumming through her body as easily as she hears it in her ears. She darts along in currents, the water a cooling, silken force against her skin. Daenerys never completely learned to swim, only to play in the shallows, and yet she moves as easily through the ocean as a sleek shark. Fish wriggle around her, anemones sway along the sea floor, and she plunges deeper into the darkness, following the current that spills into an unfathomable trench.

Here there are fewer colors, creatures that glow in the darkness like the fireflies that sparkle in the Vale and the Reach. Some are meant to draw her in, to snatch her into clasping jaws, but the rest call to each other, warnings and love songs told in light.

The darkness is endless, safe, and brilliant in a way the surface never could be, but slowly she realizes a problem. She cannot breathe. Thrashing in the water, she claws her way towards the surface, but the water is so deep and dark -

Daenerys sits bolt upright in bed, taking heaving breaths. She stumbles from beneath the heavy weight of the suddenly too warm furs, grabbing onto the arms of a chair to balance herself as the room seems to dip and bow around her. Slowly she catches her breath, her head spinning. Rogan pads over to her and leans against her until she sinks into the chair and he can plop his heavy head in her lap. It isn’t long before her damp skin cools in the air, and gooseflesh starts to form on her arms. Daenerys sighs and nudges Rogan up, which he whines about, but she needs her bedrobe. Waking like this doesn’t happen as often as it did when she first arrived, but it’s no more pleasant than it was at the start.

Jorah might be up at this hour, but she’s hesitant to disturb him if he isn’t, so she’ll seek another path. Her feet and her stomach lead her towards the kitchen. When she arrives Cook is there on her own, kneading the thick brown bread they serve on Bear Island, her hands still strong after years of work.

“My lady. Is there something you need?” She asks.

“No, nothing at all. I just - woke up a bit early, I’m afraid.” Cook must have had a name, but when Daenerys had asked she had laughed, and said no one ever called her anything else. Like many of the folk in the Keep, Daenerys had a sense that she didn’t exactly welcome her but didn’t see any reason to treat her ill yet, either. In truth, Daenerys wondered if the hesitation wasn’t because of what she'd done in King's Landing, but the ghost of Jorah’s previous wife, demanding and overindulged. She imagined that wasn’t the whole story, but she also wasn’t surprised that people who had known Jorah his whole life might take his side. They had apparently forgiven his sins after he broke their hearts, that’s something they all had in common.

“Hm. Well, nothing’s ready yet, but you can look in the cold storage. Might be something in there you can nibble on. And the water’s hot if you’ll be wanting tea.”

“That sounds lovely,” Daenerys says, and goes to poke around a bit. She finds some cheese and a few dried apple slices, and pours a heavy mug of tea. Left to her own devices, she finds some honey and adds it to the tea.

Cook’s eyebrows lift at that. “Honey in your tea?”

“It’s how I drank it in Essos. Slightly different tea, but - the same idea.” Daenerys looks down into the cup, at the dark bits of leaves swirling in the bottom. Tea in Essos had been green leaves that unfurled in the bowl.

“Ah. If you’d said something I would have made sure you always had it.”

“I didn’t want to cause any inconvenience,” Daenerys says, as she breaks off a piece of the cheese. She feels like one of the little creatures she sees scuttling about outside. _Squirrels_ , Jon Snow had called them. She’d never seen them before traveling to the North.

Cook snorts. “Making sure there’s a spoon and honey on the tray in the morning isn’t an inconvenience.” Daenerys glances up at her and nods in agreement, and eats her breakfast, sipping her not-so-bitter tea. 

She’s debating what to do next when a large bowl of pods and a smaller, empty bowl appear on the table in front of her. Daenerys frowns. “What are those?”

“Winter beans, my lady. They’ll be part of your supper. If you’re going to sit down here you’ll have to help out.” Daenerys looks up at the wizened old woman. This was clearly a test. If Bear Island women fought and thought Southron women were soft, likely they expected them to complain about work, too. Daenerys pulls the bowls closer and picks up a pod.

“I presume I just - crack this open?” She asks. Cook smiles, and Daenerys knows she’s already passed at least part of the trial here.

“Pull on that stringy bit on the side,” Cook replies with a wink, and Daenerys gives it a try. After a bit of fumbling, a few beans fall out into the bowl with a satisfying thunk, and Daenerys sets to work. Opening the tough pods requires enough of her attention to let the eerie fearfulness of the dawn fade, and she almost doesn’t hear Elodie arrive for the day with Wylla clutching at her skirt. Wylla beams delightedly. Elodie is taken aback, but clearly trusts Cook not to have let a madwoman sort food, and settles in herself. Wylla clambers onto the bench beside Daenerys.

“Hello, sweetling. Have you been good for your mother?” Daenerys asks. Wylla nods, and reaches a tiny hand out to trail through Daenerys’s hair. Elodie goes to scold her, but Daenerys reassures her that it’s fine - she’s used to having hands in her hair, after all.

The kitchen becomes even more crowded when Ser Jorah appears in the doorway, greeting Cook as he enters. His eyebrows lift in surprise at finding Daenerys there. Wylla scoots off the bench and back to her mother, apparently finding a tall, black-clad lord a bit more fearsome than his diminutive wife.

“You’re shelling beans?” Jorah says, blinking as though he doesn’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

“Yes?” Daenerys says, “Obviously.” She smiles at Cook. “Apparently I sat still a bit too long.” Jorah nods, taking what she would swear is a steadying breath before he goes about picking something to break his fast, which certainly explains why she’s never seen him in the hall in the morning. She can imagine him doing this as a boy, before he disappears into the woods for hours. He halts again on his way out - awkwardly, and it’s so odd, he’s never been awkward, even begging for her forgiveness he fell to his knees with grace.

“I’ll see you later,” he tells her, and after a moment’s hesitation, squeezes her arm as he bends to brush a kiss to the top of her head. Daenerys smiles at his back as he leaves, pleased with the gesture. 

“Hm,” Cook says with a chuckle after he leaves. “Elodie, it was going to be mutton stew, but maybe we should look for oysters instead?” Elodie grins in reply over her work washing the dirt from potatoes. Daenerys has no idea what’s so funny about that; perhaps she’ll ask Jorah later. 

The rest of her day fits the routine she has developed - in the morning she trains with Talar Qalaas, who tells her they will have to move outdoors next week. She’s pleased with his initiative, this doesn’t come easily to the Unsullied. Afterwards, Mayna dresses her and she reads, learning not only about history, but about the actual, mundane needs of the Keep, scrawled in fading ink. The records of the Mormont family intertwine with matters of coin, the increase in the numbers of Jorah’s cousins showing a fairly healthy, if lean economy on the island. She hasn’t yet arrived at the volume where Jorah’s last wife arrived, though, and she has to admit she doesn’t want to read it and witness how terribly he failed the home that meant so much to him. 

When they meet for dinner, Jorah seems distracted. Daenerys has been noticing some lightness come back to his features over the past few weeks, smiles that do not immediately fade and even a softening in his shoulders against the tall back of his chair. Her scrutiny makes him uncomfortable, so she tries to rein it in, but she cannot help looking for signs that she is forgiven, and that he is well. Tonight his posture seems stiff, his thoughts not truly with her.

Once upon a time he would have hung on her every word, no matter what troubled him.

Daenerys makes a decision as he escorts her back to her chamber. This isn’t a matter of being his wife, but of being his friend, and surely she can offer him that without him thinking that she’s playing him false.

“Jorah? Come in and talk, if you like.” Daenerys gestures towards the chairs by the fire. She will let him decide, but she wonders if he wouldn’t be more comfortable speaking of whatever troubles him in a quiet space where voices do not carry. The hall is many things, but it is certainly not private.

Jorah broods as much as he breathes, but a shadow hangs over him tonight. He nods once and steps inside, but even after he takes a moment to stoke the fire unnecessarily, he doesn’t sit down. 

“Have I done something wrong? You’ve been distracted all evening.” Daenerys says. This feels like a trick, but at the very least he’ll have to correct her.

“No - no, certainly not.” Jorah swallows, his gaze falling towards the fire before shifting back to her. Daenerys tries to appear patient, her hands folded in her lap to keep from fidgeting, though it’s hardly one of her best qualities. Patience has always been his lot, not hers. 

“When I saw you in the kitchen this morning...the girls used to do that,” Jorah finally says, as his hands clutch the carved back of the heavy wooden chair. “Lyra and Jorelle. They’d come in from the woods and sit in the kitchen chattering, and Cook would give them some little task like that to do. I hadn’t thought of it in years, until I saw you this morning. And then by the gods I swear I saw them everywhere today, in every corner, in every doorway.” He closes his eyes, his whole body straining under the weight of resurgent grief.

Sometimes the condemnations and shrieks of horror that fill Daenerys’s thoughts are so loud, she forgets that she might not be the worst thing that's ever happened to the people she loves. Swallowing down the fear that he’ll hide from her, she rises from her place and draws closer. Jorah is still squared against the chair, his head bowed, as she rests a hand on his shoulder blade. Her knight doesn’t bother to hide the anguish in his face as he lifts his head. A wave of determination seizes her, and she stubbornly nudges her way forward until he turns and she slips her arms around him, tucking her head against his shoulder. At Dragonstone he had bowed to allow her to do so, but now he’s standing so straight that he might as well be made of oak. That won’t do.

“It’s all right, _blood of my blood,_ ” she says softly, unsure that he heard her before his strong arms surround her. Daenerys tightens her grip, as if she can make up for every time she might have wished she could hold him close, but it wasn’t suitable for a queen, it wasn’t fair to give him hope that she might love him as anything other than her most devoted servant. Ideas that seem absurd and distant now; why, if she wanted to break the wheel, did she subject herself to its finicky rules and whispered judgments? The wool of his tunic warms beneath her cheek, wood smoke and pine and the familiar scent of his skin fill her senses. The muscles of his back relax beneath her hands as he sighs deeply, and she has the oddest feeling that she’s won some sort of battle, and nearly tamed her not-so-wild bear.

Daenerys knows she can’t make up for everything Jorah has lost, she cannot heal the wounds to his soul, self-inflicted or otherwise. The guilt he feels at living when his family is gone is an ache she knows too well to see the way out. She still silently makes a selfish prayer of gratitude to the gods for the terrible choices he made long ago that have led him to be hers, instead of a warrior cut down in a field of ice and snow.


	6. A she bird rose and rayed like a burning bride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of mail, and a nighttime visit. Title from Dylan Thomas' poem "A Winter's Tale."

As the months pass, Daenerys finds that the world beyond the island blurs and fades out of her sight. Part of this is apathy - she doesn’t really care to know how Sansa Stark rules the North - but part of it is fearfulness, that she will learn that the lands she freed in Essos have collapsed again. Though frankly, if anyone cared to apprise her of the news, weeks would pass before she received word. As such, she’s rather surprised when a battered trunk with some of her belongings arrives on a boat from the mainland. Who had been on Dragonstone to pack them? Worse yet, had someone been granted Dragonstone in her absence?

“Are those horsehair trousers?” Mayna asks, fascinated. “Practical, if you were riding so much. I could make something similar if you like. The tanner owes me a favor.”

“How do you know about that?” Daenerys says, looking up from a blue dress that was far too light for this place even in the best of times and had no sleeves. Perhaps there was some way to repurpose it, the color was so lovely, and the fabric soft and comfortable. A nightdress, with some alterations to make it fall more loosely around her frame would do. 

"Oh, just...rumors, I suppose. People have said Lord Mormont commanded your Dothraki screamers during the Long Night."

“He did,” Daenerys replies, her stomach lurching a little as she remembers watching the front lines from Drogon’s back. “He learned their language during his exile. The Dothraki even respected Ser Jorah as a warrior before he was in my service; he had a place of honor at my wedding to Khal Drogo.”

“Was it frightening? Being married to someone like that?” Mayna asks, her eyes wide. Daenerys dislikes speaking of those early days with the Dothraki, when she was constantly afraid and hurting. Yet she can imagine the story would intrigue someone like Mayna, who has never even visited the mainland.

“At first it was terrifying. A husband who was a complete stranger and seemed nothing but a brute, a language I didn’t speak. I suppose I settled in, eventually. I grew accustomed to my husband, to moving around constantly. My handmaids helped me learn to speak Dothraki.” _Among other things_ , she thinks. Then within two years they were gone...Daenerys shivers, pushes that thought to the back of her mind.

She lets a softer memory surge forward instead, a warm night with the khalasar in the Dothraki Sea, sitting with Ser Jorah and her handmaidens as lithe dancers spun and twirled their bodies in the torchlight. She remembers resting her hand on his strong shoulder, asking a question about how to compliment them and listening to his response, murmured to her waiting ear. Not even Drogo ever seemed to care that she would ride beside him, sit pressed to his side, demand explanations of the contents of the books he’d gifted her. As if he didn’t count, because he was too old, or not Dothraki.

“And I had Ser Jorah,” Daenerys adds, giving a small smile to Mayna. “He supported me in ways I had never known before.” She lifts a black, draping gown from the trunk, wondering if it might be suitable in the spring and summer (if they ever deign to return). “What else do people in the village say?” Daenerys asks. Mayna has pulled a wooden claw necklace from the trunk and is cautiously examining it. 

“Oh, nothing important, I’m sure,” Mayna says, setting the necklace aside while muttering that she supposes bears have claws too, and her eyes light up as she lifts out a woven cape that ripples like dragonscale. Daenerys has ignored politics, preferring to pretend that the world ends where the waves lap along the island’s shores, but it seems unwise to pretend that no one outside the keep’s walls has noticed who she is and from whence she came.

“Which makes me suspect it might indeed be important.” She lays her hand over Mayna’s and raises her eyebrows. The other woman sighs, and worries her bottom lip a little. 

“Mostly a lot of nonsense, my lady. Hardly anyone ever sees you, and I know it’s because you’ve been ill. But people know you were the dragon queen - it’s not like anyone can ignore what’s sleeping over in that cave - and they knew something terrible happened in the south.” Mayna swallows. “Someone asked me if you were a prisoner, but I told them prisoners don’t have handmaids. And I don’t think there’s a house in Westeros that would put a hostage in the lord’s chambers, even if she was a queen.”

Daenerys’s mouth falls open a little. “No, I shouldn’t think so,” she chokes out. She hadn’t realized - how had she not realized? The carved bed, the thick rugs on the floor, the massive fireplace…

Her mind really has been lost in the fog. She shakes her head.

“I’d be a terrible hostage anyway,” Daenerys says dryly. “There’s no one to claim me.” 

Mayna examines the seams of a gown to see if she can let it out a little to add a lining. She’s a skilled seamstress for one so young, to the point that Daenerys thinks her talents are wasted here on Bear Island, where practicality is the most important thing. Daenerys wishes she had the patience to learn from her, but focusing on something so detailed only leaves her frustrated, and sometimes with a headache.

“There are other rumors, of course - people make up stories about knights and their ladies, I suppose. Even heard someone say you got tricked into marrying Lord Mormont.”

“Tricked?” Daenerys frowns.

Now Mayna looks at her as though she’s quite dim. “Well he’s so much older, my lady. Bear Island isn’t rich, and you were a queen. Why else would you be here?”

“Ah,” Daenerys replies, though her heart thumps discontentedly in her chest; beyond the insult to both of them there’s something malignant in such a rumor, and she wants to crush it under her heel. “Mayna, if you hear any such words again, you will answer them that it was my choice to join with the knight who protected and advised me for years. Is that understood?”

Mayna's hazel eyes shine brightly with mischief. “Yes, my lady. I’ll tell them to piss off.”

Daenerys’s sharpness melts into a bark of unexpected, genuine laughter at her handmaid’s jarring frankness, and they return to sorting out scraps of her life in exile. Something in her chest softens when she lets herself think of how Jorah has followed her around the world, treated her as his guiding star while standing at her side. 

“Ser Jorah has been my dear friend for so long. I could have had Dragonstone, but I decided that I would rather be with him.” She likes the way this sounds, a choice borne of companionship, fondness, affection even. Not the desperate, confused whisper in a room that was little better than a cell in King’s Landing.

“So you are...getting along?” Mayna glances at her sideways.

“Of course we are.” 

“But you don’t share a bed. Ever.” Daenerys feels a tightness return to her chest, Mayna’s directness suddenly infinitely less charming. “I mean, neither of you was really in a fit state at first - “

“Neither of us?”

“Aye. Lord Mormont used to wander the keep half the night after the two of you arrived. He’d look in on you, walk around like he was guarding the place. He’s gotten better about it, I suppose.” She holds up a hopelessly crumpled gown in blue silk, wrinkling her nose at its uselessness, Daenerys suspects, envisioning it being cut down into scarves. “Anyway. I don’t think anyone finds it odd that you don't share your chambers - my cousin Anna says she’d kick out her own husband if she could for all his snoring.“

“That’s quite enough, Mayna.” Daenerys says sternly.

“Apologies, my lady. I’m simply saying - the winter is long, and it’s very cold. Why not stay warm? It wouldn’t be like before, he wouldn’t hurt you.” Before Daenerys can scold her for prying Mayna pulls a wisp of gray pleated fabric and leather straps from the bottom of the trunk. “What is _this_?”

Daenerys feels another smile curve her lips. “That is a gown. For a much warmer climate. I don't even know why I would have brought it across the Narrow Sea.” Mayna makes much exclamation that it’s not even enough fabric for undergarments, never mind a dress. Daenerys briefly models it - very briefly, even with the fire going it’s far too chilly, and honestly the top feels a bit snug now. Mayna returns it to the trunk, joking that perhaps they’ll figure out something workable for such an indecent garment someday. Mayna is skilled at smoothing things over, Daenerys notices, simply drifting from any conversation that might be rattling to some other amusing topic. Perhaps that was why she was chosen for the position.

Alone in her chambers that night, Daenerys wonders about what other gossip might be floating around the village. Sansa Stark’s demand that she marry Jorah made no sense at the time, even Jon had found it ridiculous, but now Daenerys sees it as an obvious ploy to keep her _out_ of the north. Undoubtedly Sansa expected Daenerys to revolt against being joined with a lower house, with a remote speck of land, and with a man more than twice her age.

Daenerys considers that she doesn’t know what to do with Mayna’s other, rather more _intrusive_ query. Their marriage obviously didn't have a pleasant beginning, but Jorah has been thawing, less and less withdrawn. He has grown more affectionate in gaze and voice, enough that she is convinced she still holds some piece of his heart, though now she must share that heart with Bear Island. Perhaps she always did, and it is simply more obvious now that his whole day cannot revolve around her bidding. 

Of course, no one knows better than her that fondness and desire are not the same. She had been clear with him about his place as her knight, back in Qarth, and so perhaps he assumes more intimacy would be unwelcome now. Yet if she had been queen and married some high lord for political reasons she would have tolerated him, surely it would be more pleasant with a man who practically knows the shape of her soul. 

_You speak as if you deserve to have someone love you like that_ , she chides herself. _How many people did you steal from those who loved them?_ Daenerys shivers, unwilling to let memories of the last war surface so late at night.

Instead, she recalls Mayna’s gentle words, _he wouldn’t hurt you_ , for they suggest a slightly naive quality that doesn’t quite match her handmaid’s frank demeanor. Apparently all gossip doesn’t reach the island, if Mayna thinks she has been a lonely queen since her husband died. Which is probably good, because the gods only know what kind of awkward questions Mayna might have about the former King in the North. Still, it is easy to see how Mayna has reached her conclusions. Jorah is gentle with her, tender even at times now in ways he wouldn’t have dared before, when Daenerys was queen. The sensation of him kissing her hair lingered for hours in her mind the other day, and even though she’d meant to comfort him, his arms around her had calmed her in a way she hadn’t expected.

Her hands clutch the furs and she sighs. Daenerys supposes that she should be glad, relieved, even that Jorah doesn’t wish to impose himself. They are friends, they can live as friends for the rest of their lives. Worse marriages exist, she knows this as well as any woman. Jorah spoke plainly about expecting nothing more from her, and she believed him. Still, she had promised herself to him before the gods, and he could change his mind about just how much he cared for her feelings on the matter. 

He wouldn’t. But he _could_.

He has loved her for years. He loved her enough to give up his pardon, to see her safely through the Red Waste, to have the flesh cut from his body. Beyond banishments and her cold words and hot temper. _Until you did something unforgivable._

She’s been able to keep herself safe, all these years. Daario, cocky and delightful and _disposable_. Jon, so invested in his honor that it practically choked him. Marriage though, is a trap, a chain to keep her tethered to the ground. ( _Except you deserve it, to be chained under the ground and left in the darkness to weep..._ ) She doesn’t truly believe Jorah would hurt her but he would shatter what’s left of her heart if he tried.

Daenerys only realizes how hard she is breathing when Rogan, roused from sleep, makes a grumbling whimper from the foot of her bed. She sits up, blinking back tears she doesn’t want to shed, and moves to hug the massive dog around his ruffed neck, waiting for her heart to stop pounding.

As her nerves settle, Daenerys starts to feel ridiculous, embarrassed and possibly a little annoyed with herself that such thoughts would even cross her mind. She is practically an invader who has occupied Jorah’s space, and he has been resigned, then cordial, then kindly. His love is not a threat but a promise of peace, of a home precious and long sought. Still, she’s made a habit of seeking reassurance, and she won’t sleep for a while anyway.

After she gives Rogan an extra squeeze, Daenerys slips from her bed and wraps herself in a thick woolen robe. Silently, she makes her way down the dark hallway to her husband’s quarters. The Mormont keep seems empty at night, with no soldiers guarding the halls. She’s unused to the idea of natural safety, with no threats against her in the night. The door to Jorah’s bedchamber creaks as she opens it, and he is on his feet within seconds.

“Daenerys?” he asks in confusion. “What is it? Are you alright?” He tries to blink the sleep from his eyes, rubs his face, and suddenly Daenerys feels whatever questions she might have had stick in her throat.

“I’m fine, I just -” she falters, feeling silly, though finally some words make their way to her lips. “Why am I in what should be your room?”

“Why are you where?” Jorah asks blearily, and moves past her to stoke the fire. When it’s pleasantly flickering again and he can see her properly, he sits at the edge of the bed and waits. Daenerys climbs onto the bed next to him, pulling her knees to her chest so she can rest her chin against them. Her feet are cold, and she casually edges her toes under Jorah’s thigh. Perhaps if he was fully awake, he wouldn’t have immediately tried to warm her feet under his large hand, intimate and chaste all at once. He doesn’t even scold her for not wearing socks.

“You gave me the lord’s chambers, _husband_. Even though you are lord here.” In the softness of night, it does not feel strange to call him so.

“Ah,” he says, and licks his lips before answering. “You were a queen, I assumed you would be accustomed to spacious rooms. That was the best I could do.”

“I think you’ve greatly misunderstood the purpose of all of this. Which I don’t believe was to continue treating me like a queen.”

At that, Jorah smiles, such a rare occurrence nowadays that she thinks her heart flutters a little at the sight. “And who is going to correct me?”

She dips her head in concession. “I suppose there is an advantage to being so far removed from the seat of power.”

“Aye, there is. Besides, this was my room when I was a boy. I’m rather attached to it.” At this Daenerys can’t help her own smile, trying to imagine Jorah as a little boy with golden curls, nestled beneath the furs of this bed. “But I doubt that’s the question keeping you awake, _my lady_.” Playfulness suits him; he looks handsome, calm and content for once in the firelight with sleep-mussed hair. Distractingly so, because she’s struggling to find another excuse for her late night visit. 

How very strange. His face hasn’t changed, but she supposes it never mattered before. He might be handsome, but he was her sworn knight, her servant. Handsome, but too low born. Handsome, but disgraced. 

“It’s nothing,” she finally says. “Just nostalgia, I think, after sorting through my things with Mayna. Most of it isn’t practical for here, of course, but she’ll see what she can do with it. She’s like to be laughing in her sleep about that gray dress I wore in Meereen.”

“There was nothing funny about you in that dress,” Jorah says warmly, and unexpectedly Daenerys feels a pleasant churn in her belly. She doesn’t think he can see it, but she’s sure that a blush tints her cheeks as she looks up through her lashes.

This feels unexpectedly like an altogether different sort of nighttime call, and the room is suddenly very warm. Daenerys swallows, suddenly aware of the rough weight of Jorah’s hand on her feet and the scratchy lambswool of her robe. Her heart pounds, but for entirely different reasons from those that kept her from sleep. She could cast out the ambiguity by simply answering all of her questions at once, and she probably wouldn’t need a single troublesome word.

“It’s late,” Jorah finally says, a gentle release, a diplomatic one. Perhaps he isn’t quite sure how to rearrange their relationship either, from knight and queen to husband and wife.

“Is it? I don’t know how any of you can tell,” Daenerys replies, trying to revive their earlier playfulness and he smiles again, eyes twinkling a little.

“You get used to it.” Jorah gently lays a hand between her shoulder blades to guide her to the door, softer than the way he’s had to drag her to safety in the past...but it is safety indeed, this space between them.

He escorts her back to her chamber, that should have been his chamber, and he brushes his hand gently over her hair before telling her to sleep well. Daenerys crawls back into bed, drifting into sleep too quickly to even imagine what it might be like if she’d taken his hand and led him inside.


	7. Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go/On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting to know Bear Island, outside and in. Title from the poem, "A Winter's Tale" by DH Lawrence.

The snow and ice recede for a few days, and Daenerys squints at the sunlight when it unexpectedly bursts through the clouds for the first time in weeks. Despite the frigid temperatures, Bear Island rousts up their determination and starts to carve out paths to make a frosted, almost magical place. Jorah cuts training short that morning to escort her on a hike, for she has seen little of the island’s beauty, and because he thinks the fresh air will do her some good.

Daenerys is thrilled about the scenery, less so about the fresh air, because after a few minutes on the hills beyond the keep’s walls she can’t properly feel her own face. She must resemble a fire priestess, with a thick scarf pulled up over her nose so that only her eyes are visible; Jorah doesn’t even bother to cover his head. The frozen North she encountered on The Long Night was terrifying, but the untouched snow, broken up only by animal tracks, and the forests glittering with ice have a beauty that unexpectedly soothes something inside her, when she has always been a creature of fire and heat at heart. 

Jorah had longed to show his queen these places once, these landscapes he sold her secrets to reach, and seven hells, that’s just one more thing she’s ruined, having arrived here in shame and not triumph.

Atop a hill dotted with scrubby pines, Daenerys gazes out over the sea. Jorah tries to orient her, noting the path from the beach to the village, the direction to the mainland, but Daenerys finds herself strangely unable to focus on the voice that grounds her above all else, distracted by the gray-green waters that match the ones in her dreams. Finally, she glances down towards the shore, and sees something she wasn’t expecting.

“What are those?” Daenerys pulls down her scarf to ask, pointing out some odd, gray creatures on the beach. They roll around on the sand, push themselves around with flippers. “There must be dozens of them.”

“Seals. I suppose there weren’t any on Dragonstone?“

“No - i’ve never seen anything like them.” Curious, she watches them wobble around on their bellies, listens to them make little barking sounds to each other.

“You’ve sort of made their acquaintance already,” Jorah says, glancing downward when Daenerys’s brow furrows in a frown. “Your boots. That’s what keeps them from soaking through.” Daenerys makes a small noise of dismay, recalling the soft, silky fur.

“Shall we go closer?” Jorah asks, and she nods. He takes her hand to carefully lead her down a rocky path towards the beach. The sun has melted the ice despite the cold temperature but they proceed slowly and carefully - Jorah warns her that too much sudden movement could cause the seals to rush into the water. There is a final drop before they reach the pebbled beach, and Jorah lifts her down, setting her gently on her feet. Daenerys smiles at the sight of the wind fluttering his silver and gold curls, at seeing Jorah in the place where he belongs, but she isn’t sure that he notices. 

They’re watching the seals sunning themselves on the shore when she hears something - except she doesn’t really hear it, not like hearing her brother’s sneering jibes. A voice she can feel, in her head and heart, straining through her fingers and toes like the vibration of a metal rod being struck. _Come to the water._ And she wants to, even though she knows it is colder than she can possibly imagine, that it would be madness, even death to fall into it…

“So,” Jorah says, apropos of nothing. “Aegon Targaryen.” Daenerys jolts out of the trance the water casts over her and stares at him, her mouth falling open in confusion.

“How have you held that in for months?” she demands. He shrugs, not quite apologizing. 

“This is the first time I know we’re truly alone,” Jorah replies. Daenerys holds off the urge to snap that the small number of servants in the keep aren’t likely to be listening at his door in the middle of the night, for she has to appreciate his discretion.

Though she’s not sure it matters, in the end. Jorah told her that Jon went North of the wall with Tormund and the other Wildlings over a month ago. She can’t imagine a more thorough refusal of power. 

“I don’t know,” she says, hoping to be witty. “Any of those seals could be a spy.” That was plainly the wrong thing to say, as Jorah’s face falls a little. She swallows, huffing a little sigh against her lack of tact. She sees the events in Meereen so differently now, the letter arriving from King’s Landing to drive a wedge between her and her most devoted knight, a design to make her paranoid and vicious that probably worked far better than Tywin Lannister could have hoped.

Daenerys turns to face him, uneasy with looking at that gray ocean any longer. She has a strange urge to lower her eyes, as if there was some shame in learning that she wasn’t the true heir.

“Jon told me just before the battle,” she says quietly, assuming she doesn’t need to specify which one. “Rhaegar’s marriage to Elia Martell was annulled. A septon of the Citadel had documented it. My brother married Lyanna Stark, and Jon is the rightful heir. Not that he wanted the Throne - not even to remain King of the North.”

“Wonderful timing,” Jorah says, shaking his head. “Just the kind of thing you needed to learn before battle.” His sarcasm hides little of his bitterness, but Daenerys cannot imagine Jorah wants to think on the Long Night, much less ways it could have been even worse.

“I wanted to swear him to secrecy, but he insisted on telling his sisters...his cousins, I suppose.” From there she can picture the cascade, Tyrion learning from his former wife, telling Varys, the distinct sensation that her rule was falling apart before she had even set foot into the Red Keep. She isn’t quite ready to unearth all of that darkness that closed in around her, the way she couldn’t eat a bite of food, didn’t want anyone to touch her hair for days after Missandei was gone. “I wanted so much to tell you. Even if you didn’t have a solution I knew you wouldn’t turn from me. But you didn’t wake and then we were at Dragonstone and I didn’t dare to put it in a raven...” Now she lets her gaze drop to the toes of their boots, facing each other on the pebbled shore. “I’d rather not talk about it now.”

“Still. It must have been a shock,” Jorah says. Daenerys puts on the sweetest smile she can muster. A little charm should put the conversation to the side until she wishes to revisit it, which will likely be _never._

“It’s not that we shouldn’t discuss it someday, it’s just that....this morning has been so refreshing. I think when I finally came to the North, I wondered why you all loved a place that looked so barren, so cold. I think I can see what you see now, when you think of it.” _For the most part, anyway._ Whatever lies on the other side of that gray water could be swallowed into the sea for all that she cares, but Bear Island has rampant, wild freedom in its icy air and she would gladly breathe it in for the rest of her days.

Jorah is clearly pleased at her words, but Daenerys is still cautious as she steps forward and loops her arms around Jorah’s waist. Her knight has been wary of trickery and manipulation for as long as she’s known him, and she doesn’t want him to think his wife has that in mind...even if she does. Besides, she’s found she enjoys holding him close, and as Mayna said, why not keep warm? Nestling into the furry hood of her cloak, she rests her head against his shoulder, and lets the sound of the rough surf wash over her. That his heart still beats beneath the layers of wool and fur and leather is miraculous, and Daenerys wishes she could hear it. His arm tightens around her shoulders, and she clings to him, her solid, vital shield against whatever spirit called from the water.

_Now_ , she thinks, _he should caress my cheek so that I must look up, and kiss me._ The opportunity is perfect, the setting is romantic, she’s told him how smitten she is with his home, and their only company is a wriggling heap of seals. What comes after still seems nebulous at best, but she’ll worry about that later. 

Jorah, however, fails to recognize the opportunity in front of him, and if anything his arm goes a little slack. Daenerys looks up with a frown, to find her lord husband squinting off into the distance.

“What is it?” Daenerys asks, trying not to sound a bit annoyed.

“I thought I saw something out there,” Jorah replies. “Must have been a whale breaching.”

A whale. _A whale._ Daenerys steps back and takes a breath to fight off the wave of irritation building in her chest. She’s starting to wonder if he’s doing this on purpose, taking quiet revenge for years of unacknowledged admiration. Though that isn’t Jorah’s style, if it was, Tyrion might have taken a tumble off a Stormlands cliff before they ever made it to the North.

They move on from the beach, and Daenerys spies the cave where Drogon has decided to take his winter’s rest. Jorah remains near the entrance to let her go inside, to lay her hands on her child’s warm scales. Drogon sleeps soundly, not even stirring at his mother’s approach, only the faint rise and fall of his great body and the rumble of his breath hinting that he lives at all.

“You’re probably wise,” she whispers, “It’s far too chilly for dragons here. Though I may ask you to wake up and boil a whale.” Eventually there would be spring, and the seas would not be so treacherous, raiders and wildlings would likely find their way to these shores again, and perhaps then, she would ride on her child’s back again. Winter didn't typically keep invaders in check, but the Night King has cut a terrifying swath through these lands. 

Daenerys had worried that her dragon would be starved, but as they make their way back to the keep Jorah reminds her that the bears on the island can sleep for months at a time through the winter, and Drogon may be no different. She considers telling Jorah about the voice, or whatever she experienced, but she worries about how it would sound. She’s only just convinced him that she’s well enough to be out of the keep, telling him that the water might be speaking to her sounds mad even to her, a woman who can walk through fire. She resolves to keep it to herself, it will be easy enough to convince him to show her other places when they can walk outside again.

As they settle into dinner that evening, Daenerys muses on how this day was unusual, for she has precious little of Jorah’s time here on Bear Island, a radical change from when his duties in her name took up all of his time. He seems to work almost constantly, often going into the village near the keep to assist with projects. From what Daenerys knows this isn’t typical of a Westerosi lord, but she imagines the Mormonts never felt far off from their smallfolk. 

At least she has him to herself in the evenings, to talk through the island’s struggles and the politics of the North. Indeed, in a turnabout Jorah asks for her counsel at times, though Daenerys rarely thinks the gesture is genuine, more sympathy on his part. When she tries to give answers, Daenerys often feels uncertain; she gets caught up in questioning her old decisions so often that she forgets that good ones were mixed with the poor.

Jorah takes a sip of his ale, savoring it for a moment before he speaks. “I was wondering, actually, if you would join me in the hall tomorrow afternoon.”

Daenerys pauses, her fork in mid-air. “When you’re holding court? Why?”

“Because you may have thoughts on the proceedings? It’s been many years since I was a lord, Daenerys. Any contribution from you would be valuable.” He frowns a little, as if he’s debating his next words. “Also there have been rumors. Very silly, but I suppose it can’t hurt to reassure people.”

“Rumors?” An edge of panic sparks in Daenerys’s chest, because Jorah wouldn’t care about the kind of idle gossip Mayna mentioned. _They know, they know Jon was wrong, it wasn’t really an accident._

“Aye. That you have wings and scales, and that’s why no one has seen you in the village.” Jorah’s response is so unexpected, so absurd, that Daenerys can’t help the laughter that bubbles up from her chest. 

“People have seen me! I have a handmaid, we have servants. There were Bear Islanders at the Battle of Winterfell.”

“Oh, but perhaps you’re a woman by day and a dragon by night.” The soft spark of a few nights ago returns to his eyes as Daenerys smiles, a rejoinder entirely unsuitable for their hall nearly reaching her lips.

“Well. I shall do what I can to put their minds at ease,” she says firmly instead.

Following a frantic hunt for something to make Daenerys look appropriately impressive, Mayna dresses her to look as Northern as possible for receiving the smallfolk. She thinks she looks like a proper Lady Mormont, in dark green wool trimmed with black fur, so much so that Jorah seems taken aback. Did he imagine her so once, before she had been a mother of dragons and a queen? He offers his arm, and she draws him down to kiss his cheek for luck (and to quell the butterflies in her stomach) before she faces the smallfolk of Bear Island for the first time.

A rolling murmur fills the room, and falls completely silent as they enter. Daenerys can feel eyes on her as they proceed to a simple table and chairs - no thrones or dais on Bear Island. Jorah pulls out her chair and waits for her to get comfortable again before seating himself.

Calling it court seems an exaggeration. Rogan and another of the keep’s dogs curl up under the table where they sit. The discussions are not exactly fraught with complex politics, and rather than the formal supplications she had received in Meereen, the Bear Islanders almost seem to be continuing a conversation they’ve been having with Jorah for years, as if he never left. As they bring their problems forward, she anxiously seeks signs in their eyes of hatred and disgust, worried that the people resent Jorah for resuming his lordship after his crimes and his flight from Westeros. She finds nothing, the people seeking Jorah’s help today are more concerned about repairs to homes and the potential for Ironborn raids than anything from the past. The North remembers, but they also like stability, and what could be more stable than a Mormont? She has certainly relied upon such for years. Jorah’s people don’t seem impressed by or frightened of her either. If anyone is surprised that she lacks scales or wings, they refrain from showing it; perhaps her husband was exaggerating.

She studies Jorah’s manner with the smallfolk. Despite having been away for so long, her knight seems to be competent in the role of a Lord. He is thoughtful and judicious, listens keenly and offers solutions after the people have offered theirs. Yet he attends to her as well, filling in bits of family trees and old conflicts that she doesn’t know. She wonders if he had this skill when he was younger, or if his natural confidence had tripped him up and made him arrogant. 

( _Like you?_ The little mocking voice in her head asks.) 

Perhaps he would have been an asset in the shifting sands of Meereen and later on the windy shores of Dragonstone, if she had not sent him away. Her anger had ruled the day when she had learned about his spying, she’d been too furious, too hurt to think of what she was giving up, or to even bother finding out everything he had told the Baratheons. She had wanted to blink him out of her existence, unable to fathom feeling anything but the bleeding wound that his betrayal had torn in her heart.

As it turned out, she would feel a great many things for Jorah Mormont in the coming years, though she doubted any of them were what he had hoped. Dismay and fear at seeing him in the fighting pits, a longing to have him back at her side and in her service that she didn’t dare to reveal until it was too late. Heartbreak at realizing that he would take his own life to keep himself from becoming a stone man; relief entangled with joy at seeing him again, whole and healthy. Terror at holding him in her arms as he slipped away into unconsciousness. Hope as he lingered on, not slipping away with the dead because his queen had not released him.

“We were hoping to speak with her ladyship, Lord Mormont.” Daenerys blinks her attention back to the tired-looking woman in front of her, who has two rather guilty looking boys at her side. Both have dark hair with one a little taller than the other, pink faces clearly freshly scrubbed to be presented to them today.

“Her ladyship speaks for herself,” Jorah says bemusedly, turning to her. Daenerys tries to remember her regal voice.

“How can I help?” Daenerys asks, wondering what she could possibly do for anyone. The woman drags the two boys in front of her. 

“These two,” the woman says. “Perhaps your ladyship could explain to them why they shouldn’t be playing about in the sea caves. Or at least, not a particular one.” Daenerys visibly pales, her heart suddenly racing as she remembers a little girl’s charred body, laid out on the floor by her weeping father. Her voice returns, after a moment, as Jorah lightly brushes her hand, concern clear on his face. This is important, and she must get it right.

“What are your names?” Daenerys flicks an imperious gaze over the two boys.

“Owen and Rodrik Marten, miss.” His mother sighs and pokes him in the back. “Oh yes - my lady.” It won’t do to start laughing but needless to say, these two were not prepared for their audience today.

“Owen and Rodrik, then. You have perhaps seen my - seen Drogon.”

“Aye, we saw him when you arrived.” The taller boy replies. “He’s a great black beast!”

“Indeed he is. And he is sleeping, because he doesn’t like the snow very much. I don’t know how long that will last, but if you came across a bear in his cave in the winter, would you go around poking him?”

“No, my lady,” the boys mumbled in unison. Daenerys isn’t sure she believes that’s quite true, but she suspects their mother has enough to worry about.

“It would be even more dangerous to bother a full-grown dragon. He might be confused when he wakes up...and probably hungry.”

“I’m always hungry when I wake up,” Rodrik says thoughtfully, and Daenerys has to bite her lip to remain serious.

“Does he really breathe fire?” Owen asks, his brown eyes widening as Daenerys confirms that a creature from the stories he’s been told is real.

“Aye, he does. I’ve known him since he was the size of a little lizard that could sit right on her ladyship’s shoulder, and I wouldn’t dare to disturb him now,” Jorah interrupts.

“So it’s very important to stay away from his cave. I don’t want him to hurt anyone and I don’t think he will on purpose, but he might if he is frightened by strangers. Is that understood?” Daenerys schools her face into a queenly chill. The boys nod solemnly, and she mouths a “thank you” to their mother, laying a hand over her heart. How strange it must be for everyone to suddenly have a magical creature on their island. She’s had the dragons tied to her for so long, she forgets how surreal they must be to others.

“Is it true?” Another woman asks. “That dragon destroyed the Greyjoy fleet?”

“Yes. Euron Greyjoy killed his brother. Drogon and I were unrelenting in return,” Daenerys says, a whisper of queendom and power still in her throat. There’s a murmur through the smallfolk, and instinctively, she reaches for Jorah’s hand. She never minded being around so many people before, but now something about it unsettles her, especially when they all stand between her and the doors of the hall. 

“That’s more than any king’s ever done for us,” someone in the back says, and heads bob approvingly throughout the room.

“I confess I did not realize the service I did for Bear Island at the time. But I am glad of it now,” Daenerys replies, schooling any tremor from her voice. Jorah lifts her hand to his lips - surely an uncharacteristic mark of affection for a Northern lord in front of his people - and she feels her own curve into a smile, a warmth that has nothing to do with the fireplace heating her blood.

Anything remaining is easily resolved, but as the smallfolk and others file out, she notices Jorah's posture has shifted. He isn't exactly on guard but his fist is clenched, digging against his thigh. _He’s in pain_ , she realizes.

“Can I help?” Daenerys asks quietly, laying her hand over his fist as the last man exits the room.

“No, it’s nothing -” Jorah’s pride makes an attempt to win out, but he falters at her raised eyebrows and sighs, letting his shoulders slump. “Just my back. Sitting too long, I suspect.”

“Then we’ll walk for a bit,” Daenerys says insistently, as she helps him ease into standing again. “And you’ll stand next time, if you need to. We can’t have you hobbling about like an old man because you’re too proud to admit your back hurts.”

“Daenerys, I _am_ an old man,” he says with a sigh. She takes his arm, presses her cheek against his shoulder.

“Not so old,” she insists. “I won’t allow it. Now march, ser.”


	8. So with the stretch of the white road before me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting out and about, though Jorah might wish they had just stayed home. Title from "A Winter Ride," by Amy Lowell.

When Jorah suggests that Daenerys starts to accompany him when he travels to villages on the island, she nearly jumps at the chance. She adores being on horseback again, and rides a little gold and cream mare with a thick coat and heavy hooves, bred for the winter. Daenerys thinks of calling her Zheana, for she is beautiful indeed, but instead calls her Snowdrop for the white marking on her forehead. Jorah shows her how to brush her horse down properly after a ride, and she notices that he’s pleased as always that she doesn’t shy away from a bit of work. (Thankfully, she is not responsible for mucking out stalls.) While the villages lack any fanciful luxuries, she still finds pleasure in choosing small things for her quarters and for the household - a cider that tastes like a sunny day, soap that smells like green herbs and mint, and untold numbers of beeswax candles for the hours and hours of night. The craftspeople seem to appreciate that she doesn’t mind simpler wares; they tell her to return when she needs a new cloak, salve for her fair skin, a cradle. 

The women of Bear Island especially interest her, for as she has learned with Mayna, the idea of being "ladylike" holds no interest for them. Even the women close to Jorah's age... actually, especially the women close to Jorah's age. They fascinate her, burning with inner fire despite their dreary surroundings. Some have clearly not forgotten Jorah’s shameful crimes, and Daenerys observes how he accepts their disdain with calm resignation. These women have no time for her either, her attempts to be pleasant are met with stony faces and cold gazes. Still, others seem pleased to have him returned, they remember a lord who treated people well, and that will suffice for the winter. 

One of their trips takes them to a little village on the coast where a mill makes flour for the island. A woman greets them with a cheerful smile, a welcome sight on Bear Island, which Daenerys finds has an endless supply of stoic faces. 

“Ah, this is the dragon queen we’ve heard so much about,” she says, brushing off her hands on her apron. Her frizzy, dark hair has a thick gray streak on one side, and her brown eyes shine brightly. “Quite fancy.” Though such words could be harsh, her voice is warm, and Daenerys smiles. “Ah, well no wonder he’s married you. Lord Mormont could never resist a pretty smile. Not that I remember any of us resisting.” Daenerys turns to her husband with raised eyebrows.

“You knew Ser Jorah in his younger years, my lady?” Daenerys asks, trying not to laugh at Jorah’s increasingly pink, bashful face. “I should like to hear about that.”

The woman laughed. “You’re the only lady here, I’m afraid.” She takes Daenerys's arm, and it's a small shock. People don't touch queens like they are old friends. "Let me show you how your bread comes to be. Lord Mormont can amuse himself for a moment, he’s quite familiar with the process."

The mill, Helena explains, relies on the tide to power the grinding of rye, oats, and wheat into flour. At high tide the mill pond would fill with sea water, and the gates would close as the tide started to go out again. Sacks of grain were hoisted into bins on the top floor, and then moved on a sort of chute to be crushed in the millstones, and run through a sieve powered by the great wheel, which turns through the force of the retained water. Daenerys is peering into the works when Helena gently taps at her shoulder to signal that they should move on. 

The touch is gentle, completely harmless, but Daenerys gasps and jerks away, her heart suddenly leaping in her chest. She might have swatted Helena’s arm away, if the woman wasn’t quick enough to step out of the way. Flushing in embarrassment, she lays her hand over the place where her chest feels tight. “I’m sorry. I seem to get startled so easily lately,” she whispers.

“I’ve seen that in my brother.” Helena replies, and her gaze softens. “They say you rode your dragon into battle. That you train alongside the children now, with your soldier from Essos. My nephew has seen you there.”

Daenerys swallows. “For better or for worse. Honestly, the children are learning far more quickly than I am.”

“Aye. Little sponges, they are, soaking up everything.” She gives Daenerys’s hand a gentle squeeze. "Terrible things happen in war, my lady. We've probably all seen things here we'd rather not. Lots of us have done things we'd rather not."

Daenerys can’t find any response. She doesn’t want to chase away the kindness in Helena’s eyes by admitting that her own actions were the things no one wants to see.

"At least we've had a quiet few months to pick up the pieces, eh? Even the wildlings who’ve shown up at the docks were only looking to buy whiskey and trade for furs." That is true, and it’s a relief Daenerys has enjoyed. Waiting to see if Jorah would return home from battle is not something she wants to experience, and she doubts she could persuade him to leave those seaside skirmishes to younger fighters.

“What was Jorah like back then?” Daenerys asks. She couldn't quite imagine her bear knight as a young man, as anyone less than the serious warrior who has guarded her at every turn. 

“Oh, much the same, I’m sure. This isn’t an easy place to survive, my lady. We’ve always been fighting the weather, raiders, bloody kraken. In between, we like to live.” She grins. “Your lord husband was no exception. It’s not like down south, he spent as much time playing about in the woods and the caves as the rest of us. The games just changed as we grew older.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes, suggesting exactly what sort of games she means.

Try as she might, Daenerys can only muster a weak smile. “I’ve never known him to play games, actually. Perhaps he outgrew them.” 

“Aye, well. Marriage wasn’t so kind to him, I suppose. Better this time, I hope.” Helena winks. “He was very _chivalrous_ to women back then, my lady. I hope he still is. Must have been something he learned when they sent him off to the mainland.” 

Daenerys knows what the miller is insinuating from her playful tone and thanks the gods that she didn't say it more directly. “I have no complaints,” she says evenly, which is the truth, at least, though she can’t quite meet Helena’s eyes. Though at the same time, she almost wants to ask for more details, as she has never seen Jorah seek any woman’s company, though of course he’d had any number of nights to himself in Essos... Definitely time to change the subject, before she asks something entirely inappropriate. Daenerys clears her throat. “It’s funny. I’d never met anyone from the North before. I thought everyone would look like Ser Jorah. Blue eyes and fair hair.”

“There was a lot more hair on his head back then. Looked a bit sharky at first, but he grew into his face. And you’re not alone, all the girls liked his eyes.” Daenerys bites her lip, she hadn’t _said_ she liked his eyes, but she had always found comfort in them. Helena pulls out a small sack of flour from a cubby hole in a wall of shelves. “Here, take this back to Cook, we ground it from the miller’s share. Tell her to make that walnut bread Lord Mormont likes.”

Daenerys scoffs. “I assure you, I don’t tell Cook to do anything.”

“Smart girl. Just give her the flour, she’ll figure it out.” Helena guides her to where Jorah waits on the ground floor. He’s speaking with a woman around Helena’s age, her hair tied into a long gray braid. Like many Bear Islanders, she has the solid, stern vitality that Daenerys recognizes in Jorah. She turns large, dark eyes on Daenerys, scrutinizing her with some skepticism. Daenerys can only imagine the list of failings - too delicate, too young, too short.

"Oh lovely, Dyanne, you're home. Look, Jorah's brought Lady Daenerys to meet us."

"Aye. Welcome to Bear Island, your ladyship.” Dyanne looks at Jorah with a sort of smirk. 

“Now they’d better be getting back to their warm keep, there’s a storm brewing up. I doubt Lady Daenerys is built for sleeping in a lean-to in a blizzard.”

They say their good-byes and Jorah puts the flour in her horse’s saddlebag for the ride home. A storm does indeed threaten them from the north (the headache threatening at the top of her skull tells her so), and Daenerys thinks she will be relieved to be back within their walls tonight. Still, she has a few questions for her husband about his old friend.

"They live together? Helena and Dyanne? They don’t look like sisters. Are they widows?"

“Helena is, in fact, but they live together because they prefer each other’s company to that of men.” Jorah glances at her to make sure that she’s understood.

“Oh,” Daenerys replied, smiling impishly at her husband. “Very wise of them.” That wasn’t unknown to her - she’d been allied with Yara Greyjoy, after all. "Is that common on Bear Island?”

“More common than you might find elsewhere, I suspect. Though even then I can’t say it’s particularly common.” 

As they ride on, Daenerys tries to picture the young man Helena described. Proud and strong, a young warrior just coming into his own, before he had all the responsibilities of a lord or the duties of a knight. _Chivalrous._ Surely no one would have left her alone with him for hours then, to pore over books and listen to stories.

Perhaps he’s still in there somewhere? 

“ _My lord_ , do you think we have enough time to ride off the path for a while? I’m told this horse has a fine pace in an open field; I’d like to let her try.” Daenerys asks, looking expectantly at her husband. She only waits for Jorah to nod before she takes off across the snowy fields, cold air biting at her cheeks. At first Daenerys tries to keep to a lighter pace, but her horse is nimble in the snow, seemingly eager to send up sprays of frost around them that sting Daenerys’s face. She urges Snowdrop into a gallop, eager to see what she can do. For a small horse - hardly bigger than a pony, really - Snowdrop has a powerful stride, far stronger and faster than Daenerys expects. The snow glitters dazzlingly in the sunlight, and a feeling of exhilaration washes over her, which lasts exactly until a gray fox dashes by and spooks Snowdrop, who abruptly turns and stops short, and with a stunned shriek Daenerys flies over the little horse's shoulder before landing hard in a snowdrift.

When she blinks her eyes, Snowdrop stares at her and whinnies, as if confused about how Daenerys ended up down there. “Ouch,” Daenerys mutters, rubbing her shoulder. “Dovodedha anne,” she adds, though she doubts Snowdrop speaks any Valyrian. She’d managed to land reasonably well - it was nothing like falling from Drogon - but still, a fall was a fall. 

“Daenerys!” Jorah practically vaults from his horse and rushes to her side. “Don’t move yet -“

“I’m fine, Jorah. Just shaken up.” Daenerys wiggles her fingers and toes, the cold seeping into her clothes feels more uncomfortable than the bruises she’s sure to have tomorrow. Carefully, with his help, Daenerys sits up, and slowly gets back to her feet. Still trembling from the shock of it, she catches her breath.

She gasps again when Jorah pulls her to him so that she is enveloped in his arms. Her hands are pressed to the light armor over his chest, his hand cupping the back of her head. The shock of the fall racing through her is already ebbing, but Jorah is clearly just as shaken.

“When I saw you fall, I remembered - “ Jorah murmurs, his eyes revealing fear that makes her heart seem to swell in her chest. 

“You saved me that night,” Daenerys says quietly. “Even with that sword in my hand I would not have had a prayer.” Recalling how it mattered to feel the warmth of his hands in the godswood, how they swept her back to reality, she tugs the glove from her hand, reaches up to press it against his cheek, brushing away snow and ice that have caught in his beard.

“We are home, and we are safe.” _Home._ How easily the word rolls off her tongue, for the first time in her life. What they prayed for, longed for. Where they are cared for, loved, snapped at, fed and rested. “We are safe,” she repeats. “Let us get back, so Mayna can draw me a very hot bath for all the aches and pains I am about to have.” She rises onto her toes to kiss his cheek, lingering until she can feel warmth between them despite the chill in the air.

********************************

Winter, with its unchanging snow and hours of darkness, largely keeps her from considering the calendar. She’s been on Bear Island for four months or so, she estimates, perhaps a bit longer. Her head rarely aches now unless a storm is in the offing, the dizziness that plagued her in King’s Landing occurs even less often. Her body is getting stronger as she trains, and her aim with the spear steadily improves, now that she practices throwing it in the yard. Drogon sleeps on, and the heat from him melts the ice over the rocks around him. She wonders if he dreams of his brothers, as she sometimes does. She still dreams of the sea over and over, plummeting into depths and cresting from the water to the gray skies that hover above the North in winter.

The stuckness of her early days on the island still unpredictably comes over her. Some mornings if Mayna does not choose her gown for her she will spend several minutes paralyzed with the decision, and there is hardly a vast selection.

Though soon enough she will be on her own with these choices, at least for a while. While the bruises from Daenerys’s fall are fading, Cook sends her out with Mayna to gather winter berries, and sends Elodie along with them to make sure they only pick from the correct bushes. (Daenerys is not sure that the hierarchy of this house works exactly as it should, in truth.) To add to their party, Jorah sends Talar Qaalas as guard, though Daenerys thinks he looks more alarmed by the presence of quite so many women than by anything they might come across in the woods. As they return home, baskets full and Wylla’s lips stained purple, Mayna abruptly bolts from the path, falling to her knees in the snow to vomit behind a tree.

Once she’s done being ill, Mayna is merry enough about it, though she admits to worrying about the winter, and Elodie chides her when the child’s father will be out on the sea on and off for months.

“She isn’t married,” Daenerys tells Jorah that night, during yet another visit to his room when they both should be sleeping, wringing her hands in worry. But Jorah actually grins at the news, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Neither was Maege.” Sadness flickers over his face. “Nor Alysane, apparently. We don’t fuss so much about that here, Daenerys. Besides, a Northern wedding is simple enough. She’ll have one if she wants one.” She tries to smile back, but worry and memories, both old and not-so-old, have her furrowing her brow. Jorah notices, tilts his head thoughtfully.

“Will it upset _you_?” He says more gently. “Someone else could serve you, until after the child is born.” Because he remembers, of course, what she lost to a witch’s curse. 

“Certainly not,” Daenerys says, and drops onto the bed beside him. “It’s like having this ancient, deep wound. The pain rarely bothers me, unless something jabs directly at it. Hardly anything found the target, for a while.” The sympathy in his eyes makes her want to squirm, and instead she straightens her back and lifts her chin, feeling determined. “I’m very fond of Mayna. She is an excellent handmaid, and unusually skilled. She trapped this ermine herself.” Daenerys holds out a fur-trimmed sleeve, to Jorah’s amusement. “Mayna stays as long as she wishes to serve. I believe that is the sort of decision the lady of the house makes.”

Jorah nods. “Very well. I imagine she won’t be the only one in the keep - not to mention the village. Long nights have that effect on people.” His cheeks may have darkened a little at that; she can’t quite tell in the firelight, but he drops his head, the way he always does when he’s embarrassed.

“Thank you for understanding,” Daenerys says, and before she leaves him she brushes a feather light kiss against the sharp ridge of his cheekbone. 

A memory trails her down the hall to her rooms, the sensation of kissing Jorah’s cheek before she stepped into Drogo’s pyre, the still fresh scar from Qotho’s arakh beneath her palm and the scruff of his beard brushing her chin. She hadn’t fully grasped the power she held over him, even seeing his fear and fury melt at her touch. Her knight hadn’t understood her intentions, but she had felt the pull of her magic so deeply that night that no words could have moved her from her path. His concern had touched her heart, but it hadn’t mattered to her in the least.

Pressing her hands against the heavy door of her room to close it behind her, she has to admit she is pleased with how things have changed. The more time they have together, the more Jorah treats her like a confidante and a partner, and less like his queen. For the first time in their relationship, she is as much his friend as he is hers. They can touch their old memories, without feeling like they will burn themselves. Daenerys has always enjoyed his company, oddly matched as they are, and she likes it all the more now, with him at her side, at her table, in soft firelight and the surreal, gray light of winter. He has shown the people that she is to be understood as the Lady of Bear Island - not a hostage, not a prisoner being punished.

_You would not only be respected and feared, you would be loved._ Perhaps Jorah had his own gift of prophecy, with a cracked sense of geography.

Daenerys sighs as she steps over Rogan, curled up in a heap on the floor, and drapes her bedrobe over the foot of the bed. She is Jorah’s lady wife in every way but one, and every nightfall reminds her. Perhaps Jorah thought it wasn’t important since they couldn’t produce an heir anyway but gods, isn’t he lonely?

Then again, he’s stood alone beside her for years. He’s grown accustomed to this way of things, while she had Drogo, then Daario, then Jon. Besides, Jorah's been so occupied with trying to see Bear Island through the winter, she imagines desire is the last thing on his mind.

Not that being busy with trying to rule ever stopped her when she wanted someone. There are twenty-four hours in a day, after all, and one cannot spend all of them engaged in politics. (Though in truth, the two have often intertwined for her anyway.) The obvious whisper from the back of her mind is that he doesn’t love her anymore, but after months of observation, Daenerys easily dismisses this idea as nonsense. Jorah is gentler with her than he is with anyone else, though only barely passing the old boundaries of affection between them. He accepts her chaste kisses and invasions of his private space with warmth. If she’d been well when they married, she supposes they would have managed it that very night, albeit with awkwardness and laughter rather than passion. 

( _At least at first. She and Jorah have always had a kind of harmony in their movements, like dance partners who know each other’s steps. Surely this wouldn’t be so different, with hesitant kisses turning heated, rough scars against her delicate skin, her most devoted knight allowed to venerate the queen of his heart…_ )

Daenerys opens her eyes, staring up at the heavy-beamed ceiling from beneath her furs. This will not help her fall asleep. Besides, if she’d been well, she could have corrected her mistakes instead of being usurped by what was presumed to be permanent madness. The idea of marrying Jorah would have been nothing less than absurd, he would have been her Lord Commander...

Here, Daenerys pauses in her ruminations. If she became queen, would he have come to her in King’s Landing? Or would he have been a distant name in her piles of parchment, after choosing his homeland instead? Jorah loves her, but perhaps he loves Bear Island more.

These thoughts are just a dragon chasing its tail, she decides, and with some fussing rearranges her pillows into a better nest. Perhaps he’d visit in her dreams, at least.

_Honestly though_ , she grumbles to herself as she pulls the furs up to her nose, _these nights are long, and_ _I might soon call you unchivalrous for not keeping me warm, ser._


	9. We’ll turn our faces southward, love, toward the summer isle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Storms can come up so suddenly on Bear Island. Title from "After the Winter" by Claude McKay.

The snow falls softly, Mayna’s belly grows rounder, and she starts teaching Daenerys to knit because it lets them sit longer by the fire. Daenerys finds that her ability in this isn’t much better than it is for sewing, but at least as the rows appear she feels that she is doing something productive. She proudly shows Jorah when she’s knitted a few dozen rows of a sock without dropping any stitches. He bends over her to examine it more closely, and handles her work delicately, just sweeping his finger across the smooth pattern she has worked at for hours now.

“I give you leave to laugh, ser. I increasingly realize that I am poorly suited to be a lady. Perhaps I should have stayed among the Dothraki after all.” Jorah’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles, but doesn’t quite crack into laughter. These months without battles and bloodshed have suited him, Daenerys thinks he looks younger, his demeanor lighter in some way. Perhaps bears thrive in the winter.

“I’ve assured her she’s merely a beginner, my lord. She forgets I’ve been doing this practically since I was smaller than the dogs,” Mayna says with a bright-eyed grin.

“Lady Daenerys has only rarely struggled with being a beginner,” Jorah says, only barely letting his gaze shift from his wife’s face, to her pleasure. “Many things come to her naturally.”

Daenerys playfully holds out the knitting, a snarl of yarn and slim needles. “And I have often excelled with your guidance, ser. Care to have a try?”

“He will not. He’ll ruin the gauge, my lady.” Mayna doesn’t even look up from the little woolen garment she’s working, and Daenerys can't help raising her eyebrows.

“Well that’s me told, isn’t it?” Jorah says. “We shall just have to trust our expert.” He straightens up, but not before leaving a kiss on her cheek, just at the edge of her hair, and not before she has carefully tucked a crooked edge of his scarf into his collar. (Blue silk, crafted from the shreds of her crumpled old gown after Mayna dissected it to see how it was made, the first color she’s seen him wear in months.)

When they are alone, Mayna looks at her, making a face. 

“Is something wrong?” Daenerys asks archly. “Weren’t you the person lecturing me on the importance of relations between husbands and wives?”

“Being...sappy wasn’t what I meant. I am with child, my stomach is quite delicate.” Mayna says, lifting her nose in the air with false haughtiness that makes Daenerys grin.

“Oh my apologies, Mayna. I will endeavor to be more restrained in the future. Surely Lord Mormont will take his cues from me.”

“Thank you, my lady, that’s quite considerate.” Mayna squints and looks down her nose at Daenerys. “And you know perfectly well I meant bedding. He isn’t that old. Everything probably still works.”

“Mayna! You are speaking of the Lord of this House.” Even accustomed to Dothraki ways - and Mayna’s ways - as Daenerys was, that was downright intrusive. She puts down the knitting and glares at her handmaid.

Mayna just keeps stitching, oblivious to Daenerys’s dragon stare. “I mean even so women make do, don’t they? Half the time our men aren’t even here. Mine’s been off to sea for a week now. One of the girls in the village is courting one of your Unsullied boys, that’s obviously got its challenges.”

Daenerys picks up the sock again, but pauses mid-stitch. “Wait, courting? Ser Jorah will have to have a word. Though I confess I’m not sure with whom.”

“Why? They don’t seem like bad sorts, just quiet. And well, you’ve seen the men here, that’s nothing new.” Daenerys nods, smiling faintly at the idea of anyone finding love in the darkness of winter.

“Nothing concerning, they’ve simply had...a very particular life experience.” Stolen childhoods, being uprooted from their home and fighting with all their hearts for a North that looked askance at them. In some ways Daenerys felt she understood them better than the Dothraki.

"You mean they haven't got cocks? Everybody knows that." Mayna shrugs. "Maybe she doesn't like children. Or she has some and doesn’t want any more. And there’s a glassblower in Ines Lyme, it’s not exactly like the real thing of course but he can make - ”

“Mayna, I beg of you, please do not finish that sentence.” Daenerys sighs, wondering if it’s too early for wine. “And now I think I've dropped an entire row.” 

“That’s not even possible, my lady - gods, how did you do that?” Mayna starts trying to get her now-disastrous sock back onto the needles. It isn’t the first time that she and Mayna have had rather different ideas on what is an appropriate topic for discussion, to put it mildly, and Daenerys thinks Mayna considers her a friend rather than her mistress. Still, Daenerys has to admit that Mayna does her job impressively well for someone who has surely had little training for the role, and she's come to enjoy her handmaiden's unique company. Little time passes before they are laughing again, and Daenerys sorts out the silly gossip from matters that actually require some attention from the Lord and Lady of Bear Island. 

Perhaps her ghosts torment her less because they cannot recognize her anymore amidst the laughter, the hard work, and the ever-growing closeness she now shares with Jorah. Daenerys cannot recall a time since her earliest days where she was ever so settled, so content instead of grasping for something bigger or wishing to be somewhere else.

The next morning, however, Daenerys wakes feeling vaguely out of sorts, with the nagging thought that she has forgotten something. Dreams of the sea filled the night, and she woke up at least once after the waters in her vision churned with blood. She’s quieter than usual as Mayna dresses her, chattering about events, about how this month is always busy in the fishing villages as a particular salmon comes in from the sea, but people are a little worried about whether the winter will change this. Mayna sets to brushing out her hair and starts making simple twists to pin back, and there's something, a particular tug or a catch in the comb, that makes Daenerys remember, the air suddenly snatched from her lungs. 

_(She is standing on a beach, dawning, growing horror swallowing her up as she realizes her powerlessness in this moment, all the swords and soldiers and a dragon suddenly amounting to nothing. A spark of rage taking slow, burning hold in her belly. Dracarys.)_

Everything is too bright and as cold as the bite of steel. Her fists clench until her nails dig into her palms, her stomach drops, she can't breathe -

“Stop that,” she snaps abruptly at Mayna, who freezes where she stands. “I want to be alone. Don’t touch me, don’t lay another hand on me, just leave.”

“My lady?” Mayna asks in confusion. Daenerys knows she should reassure her and tell her that she’s done nothing wrong, but frantic anger is rising like fire in Drogon’s throat. 

“Get out! Can’t you hear me? Are you suddenly stupid? Get out!” Daenerys shouts, sending her handmaid scurrying out the door. She slams the door behind her, pacing around the room as her heart pounds. Maybe she's only been pretending to get better, just one more lie she's told herself. _She was a terrible queen, a worse friend, not even a decent mother when two of her children are dead and the last has abandoned her, and the first never even had the chance to draw breath…_

The commotion unsurprisingly draws Ser Jorah, who storms into the room, not even bothering with a knock before he throws open the door. _Wonderful,_ Daenerys thinks, _let him see what he bargained for,_ the real monster and not the sweet girl pretending to be suited for hearth and home.

He’s furious, blue eyes dagger-sharp, his teeth practically bared at her, fueling the tension in her muscles, her hands clenching on the back of the chair in front of her. “What in seven hells, Daenerys? No one speaks to anyone in this household like that. Ever.” 

“Oh? Can’t be bothered to be my husband so you’ll act like you’re my father instead?” Daenerys sneers. Jorah freezes in place, but he doesn’t take his gaze from her eyes, only stares her down like an animal that needs taming, his chest swelling with every breath. Daenerys knows better than anyone how to argue, but she can’t quite find anything to yell further about, perhaps because when she allows herself to think about it, she isn’t merely angry. She knows Jorah can see it, for he steps closer, a bit wary. As if she might strike him, as if that would do her any good, _as if he couldn’t overpower you in a moment._

“It’s her name day,” Daenerys finally manages to say, almost choking on the words. “Missandei’s name day. She’s gone, Jorah and it’s my fault. I loved her, I took her from Essos and I couldn’t keep her safe.” She can’t stop her tears anymore, and turns away, gripping the edge of her dressing table as sobs force their way up from her chest. Jorah touches her back gingerly, as if she might explode. She spins about to fling her arms around him and presses her cheek to the space above his heart, the illusion that she is fine suddenly blown to pieces. He didn’t even dare to return her embrace when he returned to her at Dragonstone, and had to be reassured that he could do so only a month or two ago, but he holds her tightly now, letting her weep against his tunic. She lets out an agonized wail but even that isn't enough, she wants to scream and scream until her throat is raw. His hand strokes smoothly over her hair, his other strong arm keeping her steady.

“I didn’t know,” Jorah says quietly. “Gods, she was wonderful. So bright and so kind, even after everything she suffered.” Daenerys shudders, realizing that she has not heard anyone else speak of her friend in so long. Tyrion was fond of Missandei, as was Ser Davos. They must have offered kind words but at the time listening to what anyone told her had felt like a dozen blades scratching her skin. Yet she had longed to wrap herself in Jorah’s voice even though he was absent, still recovering in the North.

Daenerys wonders now if it was truly his voice that she’d wanted, and not this. Someone who wouldn’t think less of her for having a broken heart. Someone who grasped the depth of her grief, not merely for Missandei but for Rhaegal, her beautiful child shot out of the sky by Cersei’s loathsome consort. Someone who wouldn’t have been afraid to touch her, as long as she wished it.

If only she had waited...Jorah probably wouldn’t have underestimated Euron Greyjoy’s fleet. He’d grown up and earned his knighthood fighting Iron Islanders, and Bear Island as a whole still spit at any mention of krakens. Missandei might have lived, she might have been less enraged going into King’s Landing. Even if she lost a battle she might have had somewhere to put all of the heartbreak and anger she didn’t feel she could take to Jon when he started keeping his distance. So many ifs and maybes, and none of them matter now.

When Daenerys finally looks up from the circle of his arms, her head is throbbing and she feels small and drained, as if the tears she’s wept held all of her spirit. Jorah’s eyes have softened in worry as he studies her features, one hand still gently cradling the back of her head.

“What shall we do for her today, my lady?” Jorah asks, with all the tenderness she doesn’t deserve, and Daenerys thinks she might find more tears yet. She wants to do so many things for Missandei - to plant flowers and trees, to fly her dragon over the seas and burn the slave ships into ash, to find Grey Worm and tell him she was sorry that even revenge wasn’t enough for this injustice. She can’t do any of them here, even the ground is frozen into rock.

The people of the North have their godswood, but the earth has always been Daenerys’s last choice of element. She defies the air, unleashes fire, and has been soothed by the sea for as long as she can remember. Perhaps it is suitable then that when her heart aches, Jorah builds her a bonfire glorious to behold. 

This is winter, of course, so they do have a care with how much wood is used, and Daenerys is fairly certain she sees broken furniture in the golden glow. The bonfire brings others outside, bringing furs and a hot drink made of herbs and spirits that she is told to drink before it gets cold. When Mayna appears, Daenerys smiles sadly and embraces her, apologizing for her temper. Her handmaid reassures her that they all have bad days.

“What was she like, my lady?” Mayna asks, because by now the reason for her outburst has been whispered and spread through the Keep, and Daenerys realizes how long it has been since she shared her memories of Missandei with anyone. 

“Missandei was - like the sister I wished for as a child. Kind and wise and beautiful, the sweetest of friends. And brilliant - she could speak nineteen languages.” Daenerys tells the story of how Missandei was stolen from her island as a child by slavers, how she was cruelly treated by the Astapori master in the words he spoke and the stripes lashed upon her back. How despite this, she carried herself with grace and gentleness, more noble a lady than many in Westeros.

Jorah spoke of her as well, how Grey Worm fell in love with her and sought words he didn’t know to describe it. How Jorah had promised her that since she served Daenerys, he and Ser Barristan would protect her as well. 

“And that was your second gift to her,” He says, looking at Daenerys. “First her freedom, but then you gave her safety. Not always of course, the life of a queen is dangerous, but she knew it with you for the first time in years.”

_Yet she died in chains,_ Daenerys thinks, _a prisoner if not a slave. Dracarys._ The sadness that reaches her now feels different, regretful that she had not seen the risks in bringing Missandei to King’s Landing before everything was settled. But then she and Grey Worm had been reluctant to be apart from each other, and she could not deny her friends anything after surviving the Long Night.

Jorah has said there are no musicians on the island, but people can sing anywhere, and sing they do, when the conversation grows too quiet. Daenerys remembers some of the songs from her books; the melodies are not always what she expects. Jorah joins in for a couple of them, and Daenerys is surprised to realize that his singing is as pleasing as his manner of speaking. She stares quietly into the flames and listens, her belly warm and her head resting against Jorah’s shoulder, pressed close to him as she was in tents and around cookfires long ago.

She grew up mostly without love but she’s learned to recognize when it makes itself plain. Drogo offered her slowly built devotion and ferocity towards her enemies, Daario wielded playfulness and grand gestures. Jorah’s love is a window into her country, someone who holds her up when she is too shattered to stand, the open door and glowing hearth of home. _Blood of my blood, spilling onto the snow._

Daenerys huffs out a breath, willing away that particular memory when there are better ones to be made. Brushing against Jorah’s jaw with her gloved hand, she turns his face to hers. “Thank you,” Daenerys whispers, and tips her chin up to lay a kiss on his lips. Soft, sweet, barely enough to even grant him a taste, yet after years with him at her side as her protector and friend, it feels like an earthquake. Jorah’s lips brush her forehead fleetingly in return before he pulls back, his shyest smile barely flickering across his features. 

Once the fire starts to fade, they can’t remain outside long. Daenerys shakes off the snow, stands with Jorah to thank those who joined them, and sends Mayna to bed. When they are finally alone, walking back to their chambers, Daenerys wraps her arm around his back so that his arm has to fall around her.

“I’ll need you to be my handmaid for a moment, ser,” she says, leading him into her room. “Mayna tied me into this before I started shouting.” Daenerys probably could get herself out of the gown with some effort, but she wants a little time, a little privacy with him. She slips off the shawl she is wearing and glances up at Jorah before turning her back to him, as he sweeps her hair to the side to unlace her gown with a careful hand.

“I think this is a knot for mooring a boat,” Jorah mutters. Daenerys peeks over her shoulder at him, and has to bite her lip to keep from laughing at his furrowed brow. He is so intent on the knot he doesn’t seem to notice. Finally, the knot gives, and Jorah carefully loosens the strings and separates the two sides of her gown. Daenerys sighs, slumping her shoulders, realizing that the stiff bodice had more or less been holding her up. After years of Essosi clothes, gowns in Westeros feel stiff and constricting.

“You know you could dress as you like. This isn’t King’s Landing,” Jorah says, his voice rough from the bonfire’s smoke. 

“Oh? In Dothraki skins? A tokar? It’s a bit breezy for a Qartheen gown, don’t you think?” Daenerys asks, as she turns back to face him.

“In whatever you like, though I do advise some Northern wools.” Jorah takes her hand, rubbing familiar little circles over her knuckle with his thumb. “I love you, Daenerys Stormborn, not a regal queen or a mother of dragons or a perfect Northern bride. I love _you_.” Daenerys remembers with perfect clarity the last time he spoke those words, and she had thought she would never hear them again, not after all of her mistakes.

How could she ever have doubted him?

Her eyes feel wet as she brushes her thumb along his cheekbone, rising onto tiptoe and drawing him down to kiss him again. Longer this time, so she can drink in the warmth of his mouth. Only a flicker of tension passes through him before he yields, for his heart was the first thing she ever conquered. The Mormont keep is so quiet that she can hear each breath, the sound of their lips meeting and parting, the slight creak in the floorboard as Jorah leans into her, his hand sliding to her waist. Blissfully, the quiet extends to her mind, so caught up in the stirring and sparking of her blood in her veins that she can’t be distracted by her thoughts. When she finally releases him she brushes her nose against his and drags her hand down his chest from where it has slithered around the back of his neck, settling onto her feet as he straightens. 

She’s done that last bit before, she realizes, greeting him at Dragonstone, but now it feels part of something complete, the expression of her whole need for him, her appreciation...

Her own love, she realizes, quietly burning low, nearly smothered by duty and destiny. How foolish of her not to grasp that she would experience this emotion in a myriad of ways, when it arrived clad in such different armor every time.

“I should have kissed you when you came back to me. How much pain we would have been spared.” The side of her mouth quirks. “Tyrion Lannister might have spontaneously combusted, for one.” Jorah smiles bashfully at that, and she feels herself melt a little more, aware that only a thin linen shift lies between his fingers, slotted between the laces of her loosened gown, and the sensitive skin of the curve of her back.

_If he wants to bed me, I will have him gladly,_ Daenerys thinks, studying Jorah’s soft gaze as she swipes her tongue over her tingling lips. But from the gentleness in his eyes, she knows what he will say.

“Another night?” Daenerys asks, getting ahead of him. She’s tempted to push, to leap into what she’s just found in her own heart, but she also doesn’t want to tangle this up in her grief. To have him tonight would be to make herself forget, and she has realized today that she must _remember_. She can plant this love in better soil.

“Another night,” Jorah promises, and bends to kiss her once more. Daenerys hopes she’ll dream of this, something new and sweet in the well worn pages of their life together.


	10. Snow swept the world from end to end.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm brings ghosts and revelations to Daenerys. Chapter Title from Winter Night, by Boris Pasternak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say thank you to all of you for your lovely comments and for sticking with this fic! It means so much to know that people are enjoying it.

Morning comes all too quickly, and Daenerys winces against a throbbing ache in her skull as she opens her eyes.

“How are you feeling this morning, my lady?” Mayna asks, rather delicately, and after yesterday Daenerys can’t exactly blame her.

“A great many things, all at once, I think,” Daenerys says, the echo of sadness in her heart and sweet kisses still on her lips. “But mainly an awful headache, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. Well you are a Southron, my lady. That’s to be expected. And I’ll get you a compress for your head,” Mayna says cheerily. 

As it happens, the headache is a harbinger for a storm that reminds Bear Island that the winter isn’t finished with them yet, greater than any other they have experienced while she has been on the island. Daenerys finds herself pressed into service distributing food and furs among their people, since they have filled the keep to bursting, uncertain whether the snows will be too high for the village to be safe. The storm blacks out what little light they had and only grows stronger as the night closes in on them. The hour of ghosts may not have arrived, but Daenerys, her head aching and her heart still bleeding from the day before, suspects hers are arriving early. Thunder rumbles overhead almost continuously, lightning flashes in the air, and the wind howls unendingly.

Daenerys tries to tell herself that she is _Stormborn_ , that no weather should faze her in the least, but the shrieking wind overwhelms her. Suddenly the noise, the sight and scent of so many people become too much in every possible way. Daenerys flees the great hall, runs upstairs to her bedchamber to hide as memories she has tried so hard to forget flood her mind. Green flames, screams, smoke and _burning_ , not just the stone and wood she expected but flesh, a scent she knows from far too many pyres. Jorah’s weight in her arms, hot blood on her hands and the heat of Drogon behind her, keeping them from freezing to death before the dawn. She can’t stop the visions before her eyes and filling her senses, her whole body trembling with fear and horror.

When Jorah finds her and lays a careful hand on her shoulder, she almost slaps him away until she realizes who he is, which only fuels a wave of despair. What was the point of working so hard to be herself again, if with one storm she feels as hollow as the day they arrived? Will every day be like this now?

Hugging herself, Daenerys blinks her way back into reality. Jorah is not bloody and wounded. Jorah is as healthy and strong as a man of his age and difficult life might be, lighting candles and adding wood to the fireplace in a room he probably knows as well as the grip of his sword or her own face. They are together on Bear Island, and Jorah is no longer her long-suffering knight but her husband who loves her, and _gods he must regret it_. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispers. Her hands shake, her head is pounding. He must loathe her for abandoning their people, for running away to hide her own pain.

( _I am weak and worthless and he’ll want to be rid of me. Just as I’m starting to understand…)_

“For what? You’ve done nothing wrong.” Jorah settles beside her and pulls a fur from the bed to wrap around her shoulders, as if it is her wedding cloak. His eyes don’t look like he hates her, but Daenerys doesn’t trust what she sees. She wants nothing more than to disappear.

“I don’t like nights like this, either. That wind is haunting, always has been,” he says, “Maege used to tell ghost stories on nights like this, and then the girls wouldn’t be able to sleep.” 

_How he must miss them_ , Daenerys thinks. Surely he never pictured returning to a home emptied of his kin. _Left with just me, what a terrible trade._ Nervously, she reaches for his hands, which he seems always willing to grant her.

“It was the thunder, I think. It just - it reminded me of - of King’s Landing. There were explosions, when I - ” She falls silent again and looks down at their hands, his so much larger than her own, with scars from the grayscale seeping out from the cuffs of his jerkin. “I wonder every day if it was an accident.” 

Jorah gently squeezes her hands. "I assumed you would talk about it if you wanted to, but you never did. We can talk about it now, if you like."

She shakes her head, ashamed. “You should return to the hall. Make my excuses to people.” 

“No need,” Jorah says calmly. “People are getting ready to bed down for the night, they don’t need me to do that.” Daenerys traces one of the veins on the back of his hand with her thumb, the thought of sharing something she has tried to avoid at every turn makes her stomach ache.

And yet. The memories, and the holes within them, have poisoned her thoughts for months. Talking about Missandei seemed to make the heartache more bearable. Perhaps there is some merit to expelling the venom, like a snakebite. She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.

“The plan was for me to use Drogon to make space for the armies. I destroyed the scorpions on the walls, and we blew the gates open. The Golden Company scattered like children.” She frowns, struggling to remember what followed. “I remember banking towards the Red Keep, I trusted Jon and Grey Worm to lead on the ground. I don’t know what I thought Cersei Lannister would do, but I was so angry - that she lied about sending troops to fight the dead, that her family helped the Usurper steal our crown. That she killed Missandei, she killed Rhaegal, my _child,_ Jorah...” Daenerys clenches her jaw, a hot prickling passing over her face. _Dracarys_. She had promised Grey Worm...the images tumble around in her mind, sliding into each other, melting into something darker, something worse than even the pieces she can recall.

“I wanted to kill her, Jorah. I didn’t want it to be dignified. I wanted her to die screaming.” She tries to swallow down her guilt, to drain the emotion from her voice. “So I turned Drogon towards the Red Keep, I wanted to make it so that she could not escape...but I didn’t think...”

“You intended to block the entrances with fire.” Daenerys hears heavy judgment in Jorah’s voice and she can’t blame him; Cersei Lannister wouldn’t have been alone in the Red Keep.

“It was my right, Jorah. My birthright, stolen from me.” Anger bleeds through her words, shrill and harsh. _I sound like Viserys, not like a dragon at all..._

“But you wanted to be more than that. To break the wheel.”

“And that’s why it was unworthy of me! Everything I promised, to myself, to you, to the people who followed me...” Daenerys can’t bear to look at him, and crushes the fur around her shoulders in her hands. “I set off that wildfire. I was so _careless_ , Jorah. So many people - in the Red Keep, in the city - even some of my armies.” She sees her tears falling on the fur before she realizes that she’s crying.

“Your father set out that wildfire before you were born. People who spent years in the Red Keep didn’t know it was there. Even Tyrion didn’t know it was there, and he thought he had exhausted the supply against Stannis Baratheon’s forces.” As unhappy as he sounded with her decision to bar the doors of the Red Keep, his tone is gentle now, kinder than she believes she deserves.

“I wasn’t -” Daenerys freezes, trying to think. She has been so disgusted with herself for killing innocents, for strafing her own men with wildfire. Surely so much anger, so much guilt must have good reason beneath it. “I should have thought it through. I let the dragon win, Jorah, and I hurt so many people. I don’t know how I thought I could be the queen of anything.”

Jorah’s callused fingers release her hand to stroke her cheek, brushing away her tears. “You brought the taste of freedom to Dragon’s Bay - even if the councils you planned fall, the people will not forget. You chose to save the North from death itself, and I and everyone who understood that threat was proud to fight for you. Before that, if you had stuck with the plan above the wall instead of choosing your own way, I and Jon Snow and all of our allies would be dead. Even your dragons would never have been born if you did not listen to your own counsel, Daenerys. You were not born a queen, you built yourself into one.” He pauses, thinks for a moment. “I warned you, long ago, that innocents die in war. You wanting it not to be true does not make it so. If you hadn’t set the wildfire ablaze, how bloodless do you think that battle would have been?”

Daenerys thinks for a moment. She had done her best, with single-minded Unsullied, forbidding the Dothraki to rape and take trophies as was their tradition. But her numbers had been smaller, and she had seen for herself that battle was confusing and frenzied in ways she hadn’t understood observing it from a distance.

“I suppose it’s possible that there would have been people killed...of course there would have been.” Indeed, she had learned that long ago, the pyre at Winterfell was hardly her first. Yet something about King’s Landing nagged at her, and not only because her acts led to the collapse of her reign before it could even begin. “Still, I decided on my own to attack the Red Keep. I didn’t break the wheel, I spun it like a Myrish gambler. If I hadn’t fallen it might have been so much worse.” 

Honestly, she isn’t sure how things _weren’t_ worse. Grey Worm had been grief-stricken himself, the Dothraki wouldn’t have understood commands in the common tongue, and as much as they admired Jon Snow, Daenerys wasn’t sure the riled up Northerners could have been fully kept in check. Still, that is not her part of the story to tell.

“I remember how surreal it was - when we destroyed the scorpions I didn’t even have to speak real words for Drogon to know what I wanted, I felt like I had become a dragon. But the fire I can remember seeing at the Red Keep was wrong, so much bigger than it should have been, all those green flames bursting out of the walls, out of the ground, and the force of it just flung Drogon back like a toy.” Daenerys swallows. “That’s all I remember. I woke up in a room somewhere - they had restrained me, I didn’t know what was happening.”

“Tyrion said you called for your brother.” 

“Shouted at him, more likely,” Daenerys says with a huff. “I was furious at everything and everyone, when I wasn’t confused. And gods, I was terrified, I couldn’t _think_ , Jorah.” She listens for a moment, for Viserys’s derisive words, but hears nothing. 

Finally looking at Jorah, Daenerys dares to trace her fingers along the sharp line of his jaw, remembering the first whisper of hope she felt as she sat shattered in that little room. “When Lord Varys said your name, it was the first thing that broke through the noise in my head. I just wanted to go home.”

 _And home is with you_ , she leaves unsaid, and from the stricken expression on Jorah’s face, he understands, in fact he quite looks like she’s stolen his breath away even though she’s just told him the worst thing she’s ever done. Daenerys wipes away her own tears and sighs, it’s always been too much when he looks at her that way, but now she feels like something’s singed off the top layer of her skin.

At least, how she imagines that might feel.

“Wait. _Tyrion_ told you those things?” She frowns. Tyrion was a distant, fuzzy blank from when she’d learned that he freed Jaime Lannister, who had tried to help Cersei escape.

“He wrote to me about what happened, as did Jon Snow. Neither of them thought you ignited the wildfire on purpose, Daenerys.”

“Jon said it over and over, that it was accidental, but part of me thinks I must have realized something was wrong.” She runs her hand over the furs on the bed, as if the soft surface will absorb some of her pain. “I wish I believed it so easily. If I could remember it clearly...”

“You’re not likely to ever remember everything. Jon said you were unconscious for hours after falling from Drogon. I was knocked out in a joust once and couldn’t remember anything past getting on my horse.” Daenerys ponders this. Empty spaces pepper her memory for the accident and various periods afterwards. Yet she recalls the recent months on Bear Island with ease. Perhaps he has a point.

“They wrote to you. But Jorah, you had already agreed to Sansa Stark’s request to take charge of Bear Island. Varys said so when he suggested sending me here.”

Now Jorah looks suspiciously like he’s trying not to squirm. “I was merely considering her offer at first. I was badly injured, and I wasn’t sure I could possibly serve in your Queensguard...and frankly, it’s a poor isle with a decimated army. No one was clamoring for the seat, or Queen Sansa surely would have appointed someone else. Then accepting became the basis for our plan. I would claim I was going south to bring you back here, when in fact I would escort you back to Essos - anywhere that we could find safe harbor. We assumed Drogon would follow wherever you went, and well...hoped he’d understand that I was protecting you.”

“But you never could have returned here,” Daenerys says softly. 

“Aye. But we thought no one would pursue you if you went that far.” Jorah says this matter of factly, as if he wasn’t admitting that he would have given up all he fought to earn back, this frigid and free place that he loves, to make sure she was safe.

Words escape Daenerys entirely. Her allies did not abandon her. Jorah would have turned away from his home and taken her back to Meereen - to Daario Naharis even, if he’s still there. Who knows what might have awaited them on the other side of the Narrow Sea? Dragon’s Bay could be in chaos, with someone looking for her head...and now it was known that a dragon could be killed. Yet Jorah would have risked everything, surrendered his lordship and become an exile _again_ for her, even in the state she was in, her mind shattered into a thousand pieces. 

"Why didn't you tell me any of this?" She asks, feeling oddly jolted out of her sadness and shame.

Jorah looks sheepish, which is a rather odd look on a man made of angles. "At first I thought it would be too painful to talk about it. Then you seemed...happier, and I didn't want to take that away from you by bringing it all up again."

Daenerys sighs. "I am strong, Jorah. You have always helped me to see that. You should have counted on it."

"Aye. You're right, of course." Jorah toys with the cuff of her dress. “I still can't believe we're here. We had no idea if the Three-Eyed Raven would interfere; supposedly he could know what we planned a moment after the words left our lips. Though according to Jon Snow, he didn’t particularly seem to care.”

“Once he reached the throne, I suppose I didn’t matter.” Daenerys’s heart tries to force something lighter into life through its beating. “He can't see the future, and neither can Sansa Stark. Neither of them could have known that we would choose each other."

Jorah frowns a little. “You’re probably right. Lady Sansa - Queen Sansa - was shocked, I think. She told me I needed to think about the future of my house, but I said I was certain. Even if we didn’t have a plan, I couldn’t have left you there. I was more surprised that you found any of this acceptable.” He doesn’t say what he must be thinking, that she has never desired him, that Bear Island and the Mormont Keep were too small and poor and shabby for her, while he plainly would have agreed to anything to protect her, even after all her sins were revealed to him.

Daenerys decides that she’s had enough of memories and living nightmares; the present has far more lovely gifts to offer. She shifts closer to Jorah, who turns to gather her into his arms, and she doesn’t know why she chose not to have him holding her for all these years.

But oh, how it would have broken her heart when she learned about his betrayal. She never understood how he didn’t tell her sooner. Perhaps deep down, he knew she had no gentle heart at all. Daenerys sighs and presses her nose against his neck and inhales smoke and sweat, her lips brushing his soft, blue scarf. His breath is smooth and slow, his hand rubbing soothing circles onto her back, and she lets herself be lulled into the same rhythm.

“Stay with me,” Daenerys whispers, and Jorah pulls away to look at her, gently brushing her hair away from her face. She can almost hear Viserys’ smarmy whisper, _oh he’ll be triumphant now, you’re practically begging for it._ “To sleep. It would be easier with you here,” she adds quickly. Her cheeks flush slightly, she had promised _another night_ but she feels so drained that she can’t even feign interest. Still, she selfishly wants his presence, wants him to take up space so that the darkness does not feel quite so large.

“Let me see to a few things and I promise I’ll join you,” Jorah says. Daenerys nods, her lips curving softly as he seals his vow with a tender kiss to her hair where her crown should have rested. She might have felt guilty for leaving him to take care of things on his own, but she is too scattered to be helpful - and as Jorah had said, everyone is settling in for the night. When Mayna arrives to help her prepare for bed, Daenerys still has her memories and Jorah’s revelations circling around in her head, and without thinking she asks her handmaid to tie her hair into a braid. 

_Is your honor restored so easily, sweet sister?_ Viserys asks, and Daenerys sighs to herself. Why couldn’t Missandei be the one to haunt her thoughts? Gentle words and no sneering, it would be heavenly. Honestly, even Lady Olenna’s biting wit would be more welcome. At least she was charming.

In truth her choice of hairstyle has little to do with honor, and more to do with wishing to communicate that she is not trying to be alluring, she simply wants company, and nothing says that more thoroughly than a braid and a nightdress that practically comes up to her chin. 

She slides beneath the furs to wait, but to her surprise she can barely keep her eyes open. 

Her eyes flutter when the mattress dips, once....then twice. Daenerys frowns briefly, but remembers, and reaches for her husband.

“You know, if you mentioned that you wanted a pet, I could have found you a dog who doesn’t weigh six stone,” Jorah grumbles. Rogan whimpers from the foot of the bed, and Daenerys smiles. 

“What can I say? We were fast friends, and he keeps my feet warm.” She cups Jorah’s cheek and realizes she can practically smell the cold air on his skin. “My gods, Jorah, you’re freezing. Were you outside in that storm?”

“We had to gather in the last of the wood from the courtyard.” Daenerys finds the corner of his mouth with her lips, and nestles against his shoulder, laying her hand over his heart. Just to help him warm up, of course. She can scold him for not letting younger people handle things in the morning.

She had hoped for a night of rest, but winter decides that is not to be, and the storm rages on, rattling the windows of the Keep. Daenerys has an oddly vivid dream not of the battle of King's Landing or the Long Night or even her strange dreams of the ocean, but of Mormont ghosts, particularly the sullen little she-bear that she can only barely recall from Winterfell. When Daenerys awakens from a dream, phantoms fading from her vision, she recalls where she is, and wonders if that girl is simply annoyed that Daenerys has occupied her room. If that’s true, she supposes that there could be no better revenge than making her roll over onto her bladder in the middle of the winter’s coldest night.

Worse than any ghost, however, is her living husband. Jorah is up and down through the night, murmuring apologies because he has just remembered something that must be done. Even Rogan has enough of the disruptions and follows Jorah out at some late hour. She wonders if he does this every night, or if either the storm or her presence is making him restless.

The fire has gone out but dawn has not quite arrived when Daenerys opens her eyes and realizes that one final detail has broken through the patchwork of memories of King’s Landing, the something _off_ that had dangled just out of her thoughts for months now. No one else would have known, they did not have her vantage point above the parapets after she had destroyed the scorpions.

“They were going to ring the bells,” Daenerys barely mouths the word into the cold air. “I could see them in the tower. They were going to surrender.” She can never tell Jorah, _never._ She won’t break her sweet, loyal bear’s heart anymore. Tears prick at her eyes again, regret and guilt forming a tangled ball of sobs in her chest that she finally has to release.

When her weeping finally wakes Jorah, Daenerys seeks refuge in his arms, selfishly indulging herself in his warmth and the soft words he murmurs. They thought this was a punishment, sending her to this place, but Bear Island and Jorah might be the only means for her burned, cracked heart to beat again.


	11. From caves of ice and fields of snow/ The breath of night like death did flow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The storm rages on, and while Daenerys thinks about the future, the past catches up. Title from "The Cold Earth Slept Below" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

When Daenerys opens her eyes the next morning, she isn’t terribly surprised that Jorah isn’t there. Even having consoled her last night, she suspected he would be up before dawn. The storm has made him a restless, fretful bear all over again. For once she is glad of the time alone, as she desperately needs to think this through.

She cannot tell him of her decision to advance her attack on King’s Landing, nor anyone else. The accident of the wildfire was one thing, but that she chose to ignore the chance of surrender....presuming it wasn’t some Lannister trick, but Daenerys saw no reason to think Cersei had any clever plan other than to use the people of King’s Landing as her shield. Tyrion and Jon wouldn’t have thought her unwell and caught up in the emotions of battle, they would have known she was a monster, and had to be destroyed. It was the sort of decision she would have made, after all. And then there would be no Bear Island, no Jorah, no chance for redemption, however undeserved. No going home.

The knowledge cannot be buried - the Three Eyed Raven himself might possess it, for all Daenerys knows, and if so he did not wield it - but perhaps she can simply let it be. She has wept over the guilt and the crushing disappointment in herself, but she cannot change the past, and she will not risk the life of her last remaining child. Daenerys also doesn’t see the point of pleading for absolution that Jorah cannot give, and it remains true that she could not foresee the existence of the wildfire. This is her own burden, she will not place further weight on her husband’s shoulders, nor will she chance losing his love just when she has discovered her own, nestled within her heart for safekeeping.

Jorah has always helped her think about who she wants to be, not merely what she wants to do. The queen who made that choice is disturbingly off the mark. She can do better, be better. Probably love better, if she could get him to hold still.

“You’re very quiet this morning, my lady.” Mayna asks later, as she finishes brushing out her silver hair.

“Just a bit distracted. I keep being reminded that I am less dragon and more human, lately.” Daenerys reaches for Mayna’s hand and squeezes it. “Which is probably for the best, most humans have far better tempers.”

“A kraken would be more useful, my lady. Have you seen how many people are down there? We could use the extra arms.” Daenerys can’t help laughing at that, and with that the decision is made. She failed to be the queen Jorah had followed as she let anger and vengefulness devour her, she would not fail to be the Lady that Bear Island deserved.

Tending to the throng of villagers taking shelter in the keep’s walls makes a good start. Daenerys serves stew, counts noses repeatedly to make sure no children have gotten lost playing hide and seek in the keep’s corners, and listens to tales of great storms past from wizened elders. The clamor for her attention makes her feel like Mhysa again, but the needs and demands are less desperate, less overwhelming. She and Jorah are providing temporary shelter, but all who could have brought food and drink to share, people knit and whittle and tell stories.

Daenerys is so busy that two days pass before something else occurs to her. There is a missing piece in Jorah’s tale of how they came to be married, and she rode with the Dothraki for too long to miss the slight whiff of horseshit in a story.

Her dear knight was honest in principle. She would never doubt Jorah’s love for her, nor that he conspired with Tyrion and Jon to keep her safe from more bloodthirsty elements of Westeros. She doesn’t even doubt that he would have tried to carry out their remarkably stupid and foolhardy plan to sneak her back to Essos, after all he’d been the first to raise his hand for that ridiculous expedition to capture a wight. Jorah’s devotion to her is unquestionable, he’s paid for it in skin and blood and bone, but despite that he did not welcome her warmly at Winterfell, and was distant for weeks after they came to Bear Island. If it had been a ploy to ensure Sansa Stark would not suspect Jorah had been considering a more treasonous path, he could have shed it once they were alone. He could have comforted his broken bride, had even one reassuring word for her before they knelt in the snow in the godswood, yet he'd given her nothing.

No, when she met Jorah at Winterfell, his love was deeply buried in anger, some unseen cut making him keep his distance. Mayna had said he looked in on her when she was sleeping, yet he could barely meet her eyes for weeks. Daenerys had been so certain that what she did in King’s Landing was the obvious reason. Yet when Daenerys told him what had really happened - what she was willing to reveal - she had seen little but his love for her. Jorah understands war, no one had educated her more in its vicious nature. Only her rudeness to Mayna had made the bear show his teeth.

Anger can be fleeting, and perhaps Jorah’s simply forgotten the reason he was so upset with her months ago, or it simply doesn’t seem important anymore, like so many things that once seemed incredibly important to her. But her experiences as a queen have left her wary of hidden resentments and unheard arguments, and she has been able to read Jorah’s every glance for so long that having something she doesn’t understand about him unsettles her.

Besides, she would much rather think about Jorah than her own troubles.

“My lady?” Daenerys startles slightly as she realizes that the tug on her skirt is from little Rodrik Marten, waiting not so patiently with his brother. She can’t remember why she came back to the hall.

Daenerys smiles down at him. “Hello, Rodrik. I hope you and Owen haven’t been getting into trouble.”

As at court, Owen took over the speaking. “No, my lady. We just had a question...about your dragon.”

“What about him?” Daenerys asks suspiciously. “I hope you haven’t been playing near that cave.” 

“No, we haven’t, we promised! But - what does Drogon eat?”

 _Anything he wants_ , she thinks glibly. Though she suspects Owen and Rodrik would like a more specific answer. “Meat of all sorts. Sheep, goats, cows. He ate a kraken, I think when we landed here. Something quite large, anyway. it smelled awful.” She bites her lip, remembering her children being tiny enough to travel on her shoulders or in a basket. “They started with bits of rabbit and horse - that was all we had to eat at the time.”

“But you only have one dragon,” Owen said, frowning a little. Daenerys nods, suddenly blinking her eyes quickly. She’s felt raw and exposed for days, it seems to take very little to make her emotional, even a child’s harmless words.

“Drogon had two brothers. You remember I said one was killed by the Iron Fleet?” Owen nods solemnly, and Daenerys continues. “The Night King killed his other brother, Viserion, when Ser Jorah and Jon Snow and our allies went on a dangerous mission beyond the Wall.” Both boys look terribly disappointed, as if they had hoped she had been secretly concealing a second dragon elsewhere on the island. Then little Rodrik’s eyes grow very large.

“The Night King?” he whispers. Daenerys remembers Jorah telling her that tales of the Night King, of ice spiders and other monsters, were commonplace in the North, but until now no one had truly understood them as _real_. Though to such young children, the Night King must have always seemed real.

“Yes - we’re safe from him now, of course…” Daenerys realizes that she has no idea of how much they know of the battle of Winterfell, or what they should know. It’s hardly a story for children.

“We went beyond the wall, but her ladyship bravely flew to our rescue with her dragons after we were trapped by the Night King and his wights.” The warmth and weight of Jorah’s hand lands on her shoulder, and she brings her hand up to rest on his. 

“She flew? On a dragon?” Owen asks, quite amazed. 

“The very dragon you saw. When you’re old enough, you’ll learn the whole story,” Jorah promises them, to Owen’s disappointment and Rodrik’s plain relief. He sends them off to their parents and Daenerys smiles.

“I think you just saved me, Jorah,” Daenerys says. “If I kept talking I can’t imagine what sort of dreams they might have had, and their parents would certainly have had words for me.”

Jorah smiles warmly. “Quite. I’d like to keep you around.” Daenerys slips her arm through his, thinking to join him as he patrols the hall. “Are you all right, Daenerys? You’ve barely stopped moving in days,” Jorah asks, and she raises an eyebrow.

“At least I sleep, Ser.” Daenerys gently scolds him. “I dislike looking for my husband at night and finding him gone.”

Jorah doesn’t quite look at her. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you - “

“You haven’t truly - well, not past the first night. I simply don’t want you to exhaust yourself, and it’s far too easy to do so when there is so much demanding your attention. I should know.” They make their rounds through the group of villagers, making conversation (well, _she_ makes conversation), ensuring that everyone still has everything they need. The snow outside has slowed to periodic squalls but the wind still cuts like ice, and the only benefit of having so many people about the place is that it won’t be so difficult to keep it warm.

The sea is calm in her dreams that night, the storm is long gone and the winter light settles again above the gray ocean. Daenerys can sense the cold of the water but rather than being jolting or even painful, she feels as though she was meant for it, as if she is coming home. She isn’t quite floating, she is always swimming, but the feeling is effortless, natural to her. 

Her mind is only pulled from the soothing ocean when the bed shifts, Jorah is easing himself back into it at whatever late hour this is. Daenerys narrows tired eyes in his direction. She’s had quite enough of _that_.

When Daenerys finally wakes, faint light peeking around the shutters, her dreams have abandoned the ocean for a rather different tone. Heat and sweat and large, careful hands guiding her hands above her head, dipping between her thighs, a tease denying her completion... The lover in such dreams is often faceless, but as she imagines that she can still feel a tingling on the delicate bones of her wrist, she recognizes the hands whose touch made such visions dance through her mind that night. One of those gentle hands is draped over her hip, resting in a most unknightly place, which is fitting since surely a queen pillowing herself on her dearest knight is equally counter to the rules of chivalry...but proved quite necessary to persuading him to stay in bed and _rest_. Daenerys barely brushes her lips to Jorah’s throat, thinking to take advantage of how her dreams have made her ache for more of his touch, but realizes that he is finally, deeply asleep, the worry lifted from his face. 

Oh, but he is warm, so warm, and she has been frozen through for months. Another night could just as easily be another morn, surely.

Daenerys frowns, and the haze of her dream dissipates into reality. Jorah is very warm, in fact, much warmer than he ought to be, even beneath their furs. She swallows tightly as she lifts her hand to his forehead, finds it damp and far too hot. 

Her stomach drops. A fever, picked up who knows where, while he was busy taking care of his people, after he had gone out into that awful storm to help. And how many people had he been near yesterday? How many arms clasped and heads bent towards his? What if something was tearing through the great hall as they slept? Daenerys feels as though the world is turning dark again, closing in around her as she sits up. She takes a deep breath. Panicking will not help Jorah, she needs to find her strength.

“Daenerys?” Jorah asks, finally stirring. He slowly recognizes something is wrong, blinking in confusion. “Gods, everything _hurts_.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing serious. You’ve just tired yourself out,” she says, running her hand over his hair and trying to sound as reassuring as she does not feel. “You need to rest.” 

As the hours pass and he slips into shivering and confusion, however, Daenerys fears that this is a terrible underestimation.

Unfortunately, they don’t have a maester on hand. The man was visiting the other side of the island when the storm arrived, and it may be days before he can return. With Mayna’s help, she inquires discreetly about the health of people in the hall. A few colds here and there, unsurprisingly, but those who were ill had been placed in spare rooms, and no one in the hall seems especially sick. Daenerys supposes this should be comforting, but Jorah’s fever spikes upwards quickly, he mumbles in his sleep and his breathing is labored. A cough or sniffles would have at least reassured her that it was a cold, but Jorah has no sign of either one. She has the thought that it could be something more digestive in nature (she hopes not, Jorah would be so mortified that he’d try to go sleep in a tent in the woods) but that doesn’t seem to be the case either. The broth and water she gently urges him to sip don’t seem to cause distress.

Unsurprisingly, Jorah is about as pleasant as a starved _hrakkar_ when he’s ill. Daenerys orders the servants to give him a wide berth and let her be the one to tend to him; she’s never been prone to illness, even when she was a child and practically had to wallow in fetid streets. She is rearranging his furs - he won’t stop shivering and it makes her stomach hurt - when her hand brushes his chest, and he groans. Carefully, Daenerys pulls aside the rough linen of his shirt to find that the scarred skin beneath is hot to the touch, red and inflamed. In terror, she checks his skin for the cracking and breaking she would expect in greyscale, but the redness, perhaps a slight swelling, is all she can find.

“Oh, my bear,” She whispers softly, for here is a difference between Jorah and anyone on Bear Island. None of them have survived greyscale, and as far as Daenerys knows, neither has any other man in the world. They are as alone in this as they could possibly be.

Daenerys considers her options. The Citadel is too far away for anyone there to help her, and she isn’t sure anyone there would respond if she wrote to them. Samwell Tarly might still be at Winterfell, but who knew if they had any library left, or indeed, if any raven might be able to pass through the storm? She tucks Jorah in, kisses his cheek, and marches down to the kitchen.

“Who in the village knows about medicine?” she asks Cook, and watches as the older woman’s stoic demeanor turns worried indeed.

One of the women has experience with midwifery, and she at least has a few ideas for bringing Jorah’s fever down. Daenerys makes him drink hot willow bark tea with honey and a drop of milk of the poppy to make him sleep, keeps him wrapped in furs, and warms his bed further still with stones that she heats in the fireplace and wraps in cloth to keep at his feet. (Fortunately, no one is there to see her picking them out with her bare hands.) Doing something keeps the edge of her fear at bay; a small illness killed Drogo when he was otherwise at the peak of health, and Jorah has barely survived the ravages of disease and injury.

She is frowning at a remarkably incorrect description of Volantis in the library’s volume on Essos when Jorah’s eyes flutter, hazy from the medicine she had hoped would make him sleep longer. She doesn’t have much else to offer him.

“You’re still here,” he says hoarsely.

“Of course I am.” Daenerys sets aside her book and checks the temperature of his damp forehead. “I don’t think your fever has broken yet.”

“Oh. Is that why? You left before.” Daenerys frowns, thinking back through all their shared time, but even in the Red Waste, in more difficult days of battle and strife, Jorah always carried himself with vitality.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ill before, Jorah. You had to leave me when you had greyscale.” His head lolls back on the pillow as she speaks, and she wonders if he even knows what he’s saying.

“At Winterfell. You abandoned me, Khaleesi." Daenerys can't suppress a tiny gasp. She'd assumed he didn't call her that anymore to make her seem less exotic to others, not that he had withheld it, but she can hear venom in his raspy voice. "You left me behind after everything I did to return to you, after you told me that you needed me by your side. Yet I was the first person _they_ sought to help you when everything fell apart.” Daenerys swallows. He’s been angry with her for leaving him in the North all this time, though not in a way he was wholly willing to let her see. Perhaps jealous too, despite himself, though he has never been very skilled at hiding that.

“I would never have left if I did not believe you were safe.“ Daenerys reaches across his body and takes his hands. She traces the lines of his palms with her thumbs, the memory of her fear of losing him rising up through her body, her heart shuddering with how vivid it still is. “I knew Samwell Tarly would do the best he could for you, and that as much as Sansa Stark and I did not see eye to eye, she would not have anyone neglected in her home, even if they were mine. I thought I would win my throne, and when you were well you would return to my service.”

_(She had said goodbye, she had kissed his forehead and his hands and had promised that she would welcome him to the Red Keep herself when the time came, like she was the knight off to battle and he was the sleeping princess from the stories. Somehow she can’t bear to tell him.)_

“But I never explained my choice, since we met again. And you deserved that, Jorah. You earned it with every blow you took.” She climbs onto the bed next to him, resting her head beside his on the pillow, studying his clouded, red-rimmed eyes. Her hands itch to touch him, but she doesn’t want to irritate the sore places on his skin. “I wanted to pretend that none of it happened. The dead, Missandei, King’s Landing.”

“Queens do not have to explain themselves,” Jorah murmurs tiredly. Daenerys pulls up the furs around them.

“You may be the only man in this world who still thinks so of me.” A smile finds its way to her lips. “I can’t decide if that is unfortunate for you, or fortunate for me.” Her chest aches at a memory, declaring that she would break the wheel, that she would change the world, and how egregiously she failed to do so. She had thought Jorah was disappointed in her failure, but the unhealed wound grieving him was more personal in nature.

This Daenerys can fix, far more easily than she could a lack of kingdoms. She stays at his side until his eyes have closed and his breath is slow and steady again.


End file.
